• Work & child-care commitments; inconvenient clinic times; & personal sensitivity/knowledge barriers; barriers 

Only 60% of women in Sri Lanka above 35-40 years get screened for cervical cancer – Sri Lanka’s second most-common form of cancer afflicting women and the world’s fourth most-common – due to work and child-care-related commitments, inconvenient clinic times, and personal sensitivity and knowledge-related barriers, The Daily Morning learns.

“We want to get the cervical cancer screening numbers to at least 80%,” the Health Ministry’s National Cancer Control Programme’s Strategic Information Management Unit’s Head, Consultant Community Physician Dr. Suraj Perera, told The Daily Morning yesterday (22). “The most common cancers affecting women are breast cancer, cervical cancer, and ovarian cancer. However, women in the aforementioned age group are often working, and if not, then they are unwilling to leave their child at home alone in order to get tested.” Perera also said that many clinics operate on weekdays, thus making it hard for women to leave work and/or child-care in order to get tested, while personal and knowledge-related barriers such as feeling too shy to get a pap smear, or a lack of knowledge on pap smears and cervical cancers, also contribute to the low percentage of screenings.

According to the World Health Organisation, cervical cancer is the fourth most-common cancer in women, with 660,000 new cases and 350,000 deaths in 2022, with the highest number of deaths occurring in low- and middle-income countries.

A study done by the Open University, titled ‘Factors Relating to Poor Attendance for Pap Smear Screenings in Vavuniya’, found that while the majority of women have knowledge of cervical cancer, nearly half of the female population do not know what a pap smear is. The study also found that concerns of modesty and pap smears being performed by male doctors were key reasons why women did not get tested. Other concerns found by the said study were that women experienced long waiting times, the lack of trained staff, and unhelpful and uncaring staff members when attempting to get screened.  

A pap smear is a procedure in which a small brush is used to gently remove cells from the surface of the cervix (the lower, narrow end of the uterus/womb that connects the uterus to the vagina), and the area around it so that they can be checked under a microscope.