A woman’s sexual health may be at risk if she doesn’t have regular cervical smear testing, and according to a new survey from the charity Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust Fund, it’s a growing phenomenon. OnMedica.com reports that nearly one in three women over the age of 50 don’t think it’s important to be screened regularly. As many as 67 percent of survey respondents hadn’t had the test done at all.
Women were more likely to rate cervical smears as “irrelevant” if they were between the ages of 50 and 70, and were single, separated or divorced.
But according to OnMedica, this is a mistaken notion. Most women who responded to the survey were unaware of the dangers that cervical cancer posed, and many expressed mistaken views of the disease. Of the more than 2,000 women surveyed, more than two-thirds did not know that human papillomavirus (HPV) is the main cause of cervical cancer, and more than half thought the disease was caused by having multiple sex partners. Another 18 percent thought cervical cancer was hereditary.
This needs to be remedied if women’s sexual health is to be maintained throughout their lifetime, said Robert Music, director of Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust.
