The Department of Health and Social Care have announced that from early 2026 HPV self-sampling tests will be made available for those who are overdue cervical screening.
There are many reasons why some people might not attend their screening, such as feeling like they don’t want or need it, fear, embarrassment, a lack of understanding of the importance of screening, or because of a range of other barriers. Women and people with a cervix who have a physical or learning disability, who are carers and struggle to find the time, people without flexible and understanding workplaces, survivors of sexual trauma or FGM, trans and non-binary people, and many more may find screening difficult to attend, painful or even traumatic.
To increase attendance and reduce cervical cancer enough for it to be eliminated would be an incredible feat, saving over 3000 people from a tough diagnosis each year in the UK and over 850 lives. To achieve this we need to focus our efforts on enabling the people who have never been screened, or haven’t been screened for a long time to attend.
This is something Eve and researchers across the world have been hoping to do, and we have been part of the working group making recommendations for HPV self-sampling to be made part of the NHS cervical screening programme.
Today’s news takes us a step closer by having more options out there to help those people who haven’t gone for screening to take the first step on the screening pathway and find out whether they have high-risk HPV.
The self-sampling HPV kit is a swab, like a long cotton bud, which is used to take a sample from the vagina.
The tests will be posted out to people’s houses in discreet packaging, and with instructions on how to do the test and a prepaid envelope for posting it back to the laboratory for testing.
If the HPV self-sampling test finds high-risk HPV, people would need to go into the GP surgery to have a standard cervical screening test done so that their cervical cells can be checked for any signs of cell changes.
13 in every 100 people who go for their screening get a positive result for high-risk HPV, so for the majority the self-sampling kit will be all they need to do.
You can find out more about the announcement, HPV self-sampling tests and the evidence behind them, and answers to your most frequently asked questions on the Eve Appeal Blog Post
