Improvements in the Dutch Cervical Cancer Screening Programme since 1995

Abstract

Worldwide, cervical cancer is the second most common cancer in women, and therefore an important public health problem (1 ). In developing countries, the age standardised incidence rate varies between 16 - 40 per 100,000 women in 1988- 1992 (2). In the same period, in developed countries the incidence is much lower, ranging from 3.6 cases per 100,000 women in Finland to 15 cases in Denmark. The incidence in the Netherlands is one of the lowest in the world, with an age standardised incidence rate of 7.1 cases per 100,000 women per year (2). Until recently, some 730 revised cases of cervical cancer were diagnosed annually in the Netherlands and each year approximately 250 women died from this disease (3)The lifetime risk for cervical cancer in 1998 was 0. 75%. Cervical cancer screening, which has been common practice in the Netherlands in some form or another since the late seventies, has contributed to achieve thess low incidence and mortality rates.