Women win battle in war to kill off cervical cancer

By Karen Carstens

Date: 27/11/03

A PAN-European group of high-profile women pressing for the introduction, EU-wide, of a new test to ensure early detection of cervical cancer has scored a victory in the European Parliament.

MEPs last week unanimously approved amendments to a proposed EU cancer screening recommendation that would ask member states to support testing for the human papillomavirus (HPV), recognizing it as a "promising new test" among several other new cancer screening tests.

"This vote sends an important signal of the European Parliament's commitment to improving cancer screening standards across the Union," said Peggy Maguire, director general of the Dublin-based European Institute of Women's Health and a founding member of "European women for HPV testing."

The HPV group acknowledges that the current PAP smear test, introduced in the 1940s and considered critical by doctors worldwide to determine gynaecological abnormalities, has been effective in reducing deaths from cervical cancer. But it points out that because of human error, the test's accuracy in detecting the disease ranges from 50% to 70% at best.

Dutch centre-right MEP Ria Oomen-Ruijten, vice-chair of the Parliament's health committee and another founding member of the two-year-old Brussels-based HPV group, said a new detection method for prostate cancer currently being tested on patients in Luxembourg was also included in the amendments.

She urged EU health ministers, due to discuss the cancer screening recommendation on 2 December, "to consider the amendments carefully with a view to approving a recommendation that encourages health administrations to facilitate the introduction of new technologies, and ensures. . .access to the best screening tests available".

But Oomen-Ruijten, and other members of the group, also expressed concerns that David Byrne, the health and consumer protection commissioner, appeared cautious about taking the amendments on board at this juncture. Byrne indicated he would rather see the recommendation he put forward in April 2003 remain as it is until further clinical trials proved the accuracy of the new cancer tests.

"The purpose of this proposal is to make recommendations for mass screening programmes on a sound scientific basis," he said, during a Parliamentary debate ahead of the vote.

He pledged, however, to consider adding both the cervical and prostate cancer tests to future recommendations: "In the follow-up, the Commission will take a particular interest in the two main areas of the scientific developments. First, the new tests which would improve or possibly even replace recommended methods, such as combining the pap test with. . .HPV testing, and, second, the new tests for cancers in other organs, such as testing for prostate cancer."

But the group points out that successful clinical trials of the HPV test, developed about two years ago, are about to be finalized in the UK and Italy. And the test is already being used in North America, it adds.

Maguire's institute found, in a report last May, that cases of cervical cancer had been declining in recent years, largely due to the introduction of national screening programmes. But only six member states - Finland, UK, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Sweden - currently have screening programmes. Highest rates of cervical cancer are in resource-strapped east European countries.

"There are many, many diseases which remain difficult to detect, are invasive, traumatic and expensive to treat," Maguire said. "Cervical cancer is not one of these. It is wholly preventable and treatable if detected in time."

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