DIY smears for women in England could soon be available after a pilot project produced promising resultsIn London, 27,000 women who had not been tested or had not been tested enough were offered a DIY kit by their GP or had one sent to them in the post; 56% of the first group took the test and 13% of the second, presumably to pick up women who would not otherwise have been tested for a range of reasons from trauma to lack of time. The researchers from King’s College London estimate that if this was replicated across England, more than 1 million more people could be tested in a three-year cycle. That’s brilliant – rightly called a “game changer”.
I thought all the cervix-owning people I knew would be thrilled with this news, but there were surprisingly many reservations. One friend wondered about the practicality of it: “How can you get a sample neatly from the right place by poking blindly into the undergrowth? Maybe it’s a two-person job and you have to instruct your significant other: ‘Fold flap A into slot B, Richard. No, not like that.’”
“Everyone’s going to get it wrong,” said another glumly. If you read the test instructions, it sounds a bit like a vaginal lateral flow test; admittedly, I was very bad at the Covid version of that.
But the most pressing question was: if you don’t need a professional with a speculum to take a smear, why are we still doing it that way? Other countries have already introduced self-testing, including Australia, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden.
Although they’re vital, no one would mistake a pap smear for a spa day. It’s an awkward, sometimes painful dance of wondering where to put your underwear, draping yourself in a useless fig leaf of scratchy paper, “flopping” your knees, “squirming down,” and developing a complex about your cervix after casual comments about it being “weird” or “at an odd angle.” At my worst, in Belgium, a cigarette-smelling OB-GYN inserted the speculum and then seemed to lose his train of thought, wandering off for 10 minutes to have a beer or eat a waffle or something. Yeah, even if the instructions are gnomisher than Ikea’s, I’ll be team DIY.