Cancer screening take ups not back to pre-pandemic levels, charity warns
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Cancer Research UK concerned over dwindling participation in breast and cervical cancer screening. A health charity has sounded the alarm over a dip in the proportion of people taking up the offer for cancer screening as figures show how effective the tests are at catching cancers early.
Breast, bowel and cervical cancer screening programmes have jointly spotted nearly 90,000 cancers between 2019 and 2023, according to analysis by Cancer Research UK (CRUK). This includes 62,000 cases of breast cancer, 23,000 cases of bowel cancer and 4,400 cases of cervical cancer.
But the charity expressed concern over dwindling screening participation for breast and cervical cancer tests. About 70% of eligible people take up the offer for bowel cancer screening, 69% of those invited take part in cervical cancer screening and 65% take part in breast cancer screening.
The charity said that the proportion of people taking up the offer to check their breasts has not reached the levels they were before the pandemic – 71.1% took up the offer in 2019. Cervical cancer screening has steadily declined over the last decade – from 74.2% in 2014 to 68.7% in 2023.
CRUK has called for action to make screening easier to access for people in England, such as by letting people book out of hours. The charity’s chief executive, Michelle Mitchell, said that increasing access to screening “means better chances of catching cancer early”.
