Over 250,000 women have missed taking a cell test

Anne Lise RyelSecretary General Anne Lise Ryel in Cancer Society.Photo: Håkon Mosvold Larsen / NTB scanpix

The Cancer Society is concerned about the high number of Norwegian women who don’t give cell samples that can reveal cancer.

 

‘Over 250,000 women don’t take a cell test, an alarmingly high figure’, according to the Cancer Society (Kreftforeningen),who have concluded that lives could have been saved if many more had been tested. Now the organisation is launching the ‘#sjekkdeg’ campaign to persuade more women to take a cell test.

‘Cervical cancer can take 10 to 15 years to develop. Those who haven’t been checked in the last ten years are therefore particularly exposed to risk, and it’s important that we get them onto the cervical program now’, said Anne Lise Ryel, Secretary General of the Cancer Society.

The goal of the ‘#sjekkdeg’ campaign, which is being organised for the third consecutive year, is to get more women to seek a doctor to get a cell test. Even though several have taken the exam in the past two years, there are still 4 out of 10
women who haven’t tested regularly.

Regular doctors should therefore pay special attention to cell tests in September, by asking female patients about such tests. Additionally, gynaecologists will extend their working hours, giving their services to twelve hospitals around the country on the 18th of September, to take cell samples of women who haven’t had a check in the past three years.

 

© NTB Scanpix / Norway Today