Disabled women have not had access to potentially life-saving smears for decades, reports report

Thousands of handicapped women are denied access to potentially life-saving smears, putting them at risk for cervical cancer, a worrying report shows.

Patients with mobility problems say that GPs have not been able to make home visits to perform the vital screening.

Some women have waited tens of years to get the test, which in their cases should have been performed every three years.

Clinics do not have the equipment needed to help disabled women out of their wheelchairs and to the examination table, which means that nurses send them away.

Handicapped women have also been asked by staff to sign waivers stating that they do not want a smear – although they did want one – because it turned out to be too complicated to arrange.

Others told doctors that cervical cancer is not something they need to worry about – because “people with disabilities are not sexually active.”

These shocking stories, detailed in a new report from Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust, may just be the tip of the iceberg. According to charity research, nearly two-thirds of women with physical disabilities have not been able to go to screening because of their condition.

There are 13.9 million Britons with a disability, of whom 56 percent are women. More than half of them report a mobility restriction – so the charity fears that the numbers affected may reach thousands or more.

Of the 335 disabled women surveyed, one in five said they needed a hoist to take them to the examination bed and put them in the right position. But only one percent said that this equipment was available at their GP station.

All British women aged 25 to 64 are eligible for cervical screening, which checks for abnormal changes in cells in the cervix caused by certain strains of human papillomavirus (HPV), and must receive automatic invitations. Women younger than 50 are screened every three years and women every five years.

HPV – usually transmitted through sexual contact – is common, but about 13 high-risk types have been associated with the development of cervical cancer.

Kerry Thompson, 40, from Milton Keynes, waited for more than a decade for a smear due to her disability. When she was 24, she was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy, a condition that causes the muscles to wash away. She had to use a wheelchair four years later.

“I had always managed to reach my doctor for my smears,” she said. “But it became too difficult because I couldn’t keep my knees up and needed hoists to keep my legs on the bed and someone to hold me in place.

“My doctor’s practice was great – the practice nurse managed to do the smears for me at home.”

But when she moved later, her new practice said a home visit would not be possible – despite an earlier result showing that Kelly had cells to be checked. Neither did they have the hoist or equipment to examine her during the operation.

“It was a nightmare,” she said. “They kept saying that I could only get it when I came in.”

More than ten years after her abnormal result, after she had not been screened since, Kerry was referred to a hospital specialist. But because she had to wait so long, she had to undergo a biopsy under general anesthesia.

“I was afraid that I could get cervical cancer,” she said. “Until then I had to block that thought.”

Fortunately, the results of Kerry clearly came back. But her story is not unique. Many disabled women say that they have only had access to cervical cancer screening because their partner has brought them to the examination room.

And a woman, who had stopped screening since 1994, told the Trust that she had been repeatedly asked to sign a waiver and said she didn’t want the test – something she refused to do.

Stigma around sex is also a major obstacle. According to the Trust, one in five disabled women say that caregivers assume they don’t have sex. A doctor was told that it was “clear” that she was not sexually active.

Kerry believes that the barriers and misconceptions surrounding cervical screening for disabled women should be removed. “The NHS campaigns for more women have defamation tests and warn against missing them, but there are no facilities for disabled women like me,” she said. “By making me wait so long, they played with my life.”