Women urged to contiue pap smears

With the imminent arrival of the new cervical cancer vaccine, the Jean Hailes Foundation for Women’s Health has welcomed the development and the extraordinary impact it is destined to have on the health of women all around the world.

The vaccine, developed by Australian of the Year, Professor Ian Frazer, is designed to be given to girls before they become sexually active. It protects against the human papilloma virus (HPV) types 16 and 18 – which cause about 70 per cent of cervical cancers.

A national screening program for school-aged girls is currently being considered by the federal government.

But women must continue to have pap smears through their women’s health practitioners, according to a prominent gynaecologist, Dr Elizabeth Farrell from the Jean Hailes Foundation for Women’s Health.

Dr Farrell says there are two key messages.

“The vaccine is not relevant to women who have been exposed to HPV, usually through sex,” says Dr Farrell. “We must remember that women aged 18 to 69 must continue with two-year regular screening to prevent cervical cancer.

“Secondly, I would highly recommend parents to embrace the opportunity to vaccinate their daughters.”

Dr Farrell believes Australia’s cervical Pap screening program has been enormously successful in reducing the number of women with cervical cancer, but “we still see so, so many young women with pre-cancerous cervical cells”. “If we could reduce the level of HPV infection, it’d be fantastic.”

If the vaccine is offered to all women in the developing world – where Pap screening is not available – it has been estimated that the annual death rate from cervical cancer could drop from 200,000 to 600.

Content updated August 30, 2006