Krystyna was just 41 years old when a routine cervical screening test picked up the presence of cervical cancer. Notwithstanding her shock at the diagnosis, however, Krystyna said she counted herself as "one of the lucky ones".
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"I was lucky in that I'd always been so vigilant about getting screened," she said.
"Had I not had that test and just put it off for a year or two, it just shows how important it is to get tested."
Figures from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare show that of the 900 plus cervical cancer diagnoses in Australia every year, more than 70 per cent occur in women who are under-screened.
Though the barriers to regular screening vary from person to person, experts were hopeful universal access to self-collection would reverse recent declines in screening participation rates and save lives.
Under changes to the national cervical screening program (NCSP), all women eligible for cervical screening tests will be given the choice to collect their own sample with a vaginal swab from 1 July 2022.
Self-collection was introduced in limited form four years ago as part of a major renewal to the NCSP which replaced the two-yearly pap smear test with the more accurate five-yearly HPV test.
The decision to expand access to self-collection - currently only available to under-screened women 30 years of age or over - was underpinned by research which showed it to be just as safe, accurate and reliable as traditional clinician-collected tests.
Australian Cervical Cancer Foundation chief executive Joe Tooma said self-collection was a much more palatable option for all women, but especially for the 48 per cent of women who were under-screened.
"The embarrassment or pain of having to go through cervical screening has always been a key barrier to regular screening," Mr Tooma said.
Allowing women to take their own sample means the process becomes a much less uncomfortable and much less invasive process from a personal point of view.
- Joe Tooma
"Allowing women to take their own sample means the process becomes a much less uncomfortable and much less invasive process from a personal point of view."
Mr Tooma said regular cervical screening was "absolutely vital" to detecting cervical cancer in its formative stages and preventing avoidable death.
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Reasons for under-screening, however, extend beyond mere embarrassment. VCS Foundation medical director of population health Julia Brotherton said under-screening was often referable to inequities in access to screening.
"We know that many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and others from diverse or disadvantaged communities have not been able to access culturally appropriate services for screening," Professor Brotherton said.
"But the good news is that research shows that marginalised, under-screened groups of people embrace the choice and control that comes with self-collection when it's communicated to them in a clear way."
For that reason, Professor Brotherton said she was confident cervical cancer would, in time, cease to be a disease of inequity in Australia.
"[Self-collection] is a game-changer in terms of eliminating cervical cancer in the near future," she said.
"But our long-term success at that will depend on how well we communicate the availability of self-collection to both [health care] providers and the community."
