Question reference: S5W-36159
- Asked by: Emma Harper, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish National Party
- Date lodged: 11 March 2021
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Current status: Answered by Mairi Gougeon on 24 March 2021
Question
To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on the progress being made on the research, development and roll-out of the cervical cancer HPV screening home test, as part of the cancer screening programme.
Answer
A number of research projects are currently underway across the UK, which will provide valuable data and evidence to inform the development of a national approach to integrating self sampling safely and reliably into the cervical screening programme.
Scotland is playing an active part in this work, with a pilot in NHS Dumfries and Galloway where self-sampling kits are being sent to screening participants who have never attended for cervical screening or who have not attended their most recent appointment.
The Scottish Government convened a working group in February, which is developing a work programme to ensure that the evidence on self-sampling can be gathered and evaluated, and to understand what changes will be needed to the current programme to allow widespread roll-out in the future.
While it continues to gather and evaluate the evidence on this matter, the National Screening Committee (UK NSC) has not yet recommended that self-sampling should be incorporated into the cervical screening programme.