By Susan Donlon, Communications Team, National Screening Service
Ireland is on target to eliminate cervical cancer by 2040. The Minister for Health, Stephen Donnelly TD made the announcement on Cervical Cancer Elimination Day of Action in 2023.
One year on, Ireland’s Cervical Cancer Elimination Partnership will publish a national action plan to ensure we remain on track.
An extensive stakeholder engagement and consultation process has taken place in 2024 to gather diverse perspectives from the public, healthcare professionals, and underserved and marginalised communities, to shape the plan’s priorities.
The consultation reveals recommendations for actions based on public and professional perspectives on HPV vaccination, cervical screening, and equitable access to healthcare.
Stakeholder engagement and public consultation
We launched the public consultation in March 2024 starting with online surveys for the general public and healthcare professionals, followed by targeted information-gathering initiatives involving focus groups and workshops.
- Surveys: a total of 3,735 survey responses captured attitudes and views on accessibility and awareness of HPV vaccinations, cervical screening, and treatment. 88% of the responses came from the general public and 12% from healthcare professionals – a good overall response from both groups.
- Focus groups: these sessions offered deeper insights into the experiences of migrant women, people from underserved communities, and healthcare professionals working with priority populations, including unique barriers to accessing healthcare services.
- Workshops: focusing on cervical screening and treatment, these workshops welcomed input from clinicians and community representatives, including the Traveller, Roma, and migrant communities, as well as people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. The workshops aimed to identify gaps in healthcare equity, identify areas for improvement and explore culturally appropriate engagement with diverse communities.
Emerging themes
The central theme emerging from the consultation was the development of actions to improve equitable access to healthcare including:
- Accessibility: reducing health inequalities and removing barriers to cervical cancer prevention services
- Communication and education: improving knowledge and understanding about the benefits of the HPV vaccine, regular cervical screening, and accessing treatment to prevent cervical cancer; and increasing awareness about the symptoms of cervical cancer to encourage early presentation to appropriate healthcare services
- Partnership and community development: working inclusively with all communities to understand their needs and co-design solutions
- Research and data: strengthening our evidence-base and data systems to measure our progress to improve equity across different groups.
Building a foundation for elimination in Ireland
The World Health Organization (WHO) defines elimination as fewer than 4 cases of cervical cancer per 100,000 women, which would make it rare. Ireland’s incidence of cervical cancer is at 10.4 per 100,000.
We can reduce this further by meeting the WHO 2030 cervical cancer elimination targets and in 2023, we announced that we are already exceeding two of the three targets.
To stay on track to reach our goal of elimination, we must:
- increase HPV vaccination rates for girls by age 15 from 80% to 90% by 2030;
- maintain cervical screening coverage above 70% (now at 73%); and
- maintain the number of women receiving treatment for pre-cancer and cancer above 90% (now at 97%).
With the insights from our stakeholder consultation, the new action plan will position us to tackle barriers, increase uptake of cervical cancer prevention services, and improve the prevention and early detection of cervical cancer - setting a strong foundation for us to make cervical cancer rare in Ireland by our target date of 2040.
Ireland’s national action plan to eliminate cervical cancer will be launched at an event in Dublin on 15 November 2024 to mark Cervical Cancer Elimination Day of Action.
#TogetherTowardsElimination