Smear tests are saving 100 Bolton lives a year

Ex-champ puts on free self defence lessons

AROUND a hundred women a year in Bolton are saved from cervical cancer because of vital screening.

Doctors at the Royal Bolton Hospital say the three-yearly screening service in the town is vital for women's health.

A national report revealed that Britain's cervical screening programme was helping to save the lives of 5,000 women a year and had prevented a cancer epidemic.

National screening for cervical cancer started in 1988 after deaths from the disease among women aged under 35 increased three-fold in the previous 30 years.

Researchers have estimated that the lives of 100,000 women born between 1951 and 1970 will have been saved thanks to screening.

Dr David Bisset, consultant histopathologist at the Royal Bolton Hospital, said: "This report states what I have believed for a long time -- that many lives are being saved by this programme. The cervical screening programme has had bad publicity in the past so it is good to see evidence that it is a great success.

"I believe it is one of the most successful things in the National Health Service."

Writing in medical journal The Lancet, experts said that 15 years ago the country was heading for a devastating outbreak of the disease.

But since the introduction of screening, that trend has been reversed, at a cost per life saved of about £36,000.