Tragic Kildare woman being remembered on her anniversary today

A young Rathangan woman who died of cervical cancer three years ago today is being remembered by her family and friends.

Debbie Hopkins passed away three weeks after her 27th birthday in 2014 - and less than two years after she was first diagnosed.

Her mother Caitriona believes her only daughter could still be alive today if she had been tested sooner for cervical cancer.

Caitriona has since been campaigning to drop the age - currently 25 - at which women are tested for cervical cancer.

CervicalCheck is the government-funded National Cervical Screening Programme.

The programme provides for women aged 25 to 44 to have free cervical screening tests from a registered GP, nurse or family planning clinic of their choice every three years and women aged 44 to 60 every five years.

See www.cervicalcheck.ie.

The Irish Family Planning Association (IFPA)  said the recommended age for onset of screening varies across countries from age 20 in New Zealand to 30 in Finland.

Other countries such as Canada recommend screening as soon as a woman becomes sexually active.

The IFPA said that based on evidence to date, there is no additional public health benefit in starting cervical screening below the age of 25.

In women under the age of 25, minor changes in the cells of the cervix are common but invasive cancer is extremely rare. Population based screening in women under the age of 25 may lead to many women receiving unnecessary treatment for lesions that would never have developed into invasive cancer.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC)  recommend screening women starting from age 25. The WHO supports this position based on evidence that the HPV infection is very common in young women but most infections are transient and cervical cancer is rare before the age of 30. The WHO states that screening younger women will detect many lesions that will never develop into cancer, will lead to considerable over treatment and is not cost effective.

Any woman under the age of 25 with symptoms or who is concerned about cervical cancer should contact her doctor.

Between 2011 and 2014, there was one death from cervical cancer among women under 25 in Ireland, while the average incidence of invasive cervical cancer in women under 25 between 2011 and 2013 was 1 out of 295.