Currently, women aged 20 to 69 years are eligible to participate in the NCSP. Primary care service providers have primary responsibility for managing the initial invitation (ie. first recall inviting patient to start screening) and the ongoing recall process for patient participating in the programme.
The NCSP Register holds all patient’s cervical screening information and provides secondary support for recalling patient enrolled in the NCSP overdue for screening.
Context for change
This decision to change the eligible screening start age from 20 years to 25 years has been made based on a strong body of evidence that screening patient between 20 and 24 years of age provides little benefit to patient and has the potential to cause harm. The primary reason for this is because screening is not effective in this age group at preventing cervical cancer.
Since the start of the NCSP in 1990, there has been no reduction in rates of cervical cancer for patient under 25 years old despite large reductions in both cancer incidence and mortality for patient older than 25 years of age.
The age change is in line with changes made in many other countries, including Australia, England, Scotland, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Ireland, Italy and Norway. The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer also recommends that cervical screening begins at 25 years old.