smears save lives

25Jan08

Following on from Mr Frog’s post about his petition to government to introduce first aid training for kiddie winkles, I was scouring the Downing Street website for petitions of interest to me. You know about my strong feelings regarding women’s healthcare and cervical screening and how I regard the NHS screening programme as having quite possibly saved my life. For a number of reasons (that probably made sense at the time), the screening age was raised to 25 a few years ago. Expert feeling these days is that this is now detrimental to the health of many as cervical abnormalities, pre-cancerous changes and incidences of cancer are on the increase in the under-25 age bracket. This group of women are overlooked (the vaccine is not offered, they are excluded from the screening programme). Jo’s Trust and ECCA are lobbying for changes to be made to the law (more on this another time). There are also the following petitions online:

Petition the Prime Minister to instruct the Department for Health to rescind guidelines which state that women under 25 should not be given cervical smears. Deadline for signing: 29 March 2008.
Sign here: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/cervical-smears/

Petition the Prime Minister to lower the age from 25yrs to 20yrs for invitations for Cervical Smear Tests for Women in the UK. Deadline for signing: 17 June 2008.
Sign here: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/smear-tests/

As well as the above, there is this petition to speed up the times for results. Let me assure you that the unknown is worse than knowing what you are dealing with. You can worry yourself sick waiting.

Petition the Prime Minister to Make sure all Cervical Smear test results are recived within 6 weeks. Deadline for signing: 12 June 2008.
Sign here: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/SmearResults/

I don’t know how much notice anyone takes of these things, but I feel that we should be grabbing every opportunity we can to make the powers that be listen to us, and if maybe one or two of you read this and sign, every little helps…

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