Few have breast tests

By MARTIN JOHNSTON health reporter

Fewer than half of the women eligible have signed up for free checks for breast cancer, a big killer of New Zealand women.

Only 40 per cent had signed up to the national screening programme by March 31, according to the latest figures. Even fewer women had had mammograms.

The figures on the BreastScreen Aotearoa scheme, financed by the Government, are in a report from an independent monitoring group.

The target of the $22 million-a-year programme is to enrol 70 per cent of the more than 200,000 eligible women within two years. It was launched in December 1998 although some regions did not begin immediately.

The programme offers free mammograms every two years to women aged 50 to 64. The Government is investigating expanding the age range.

The Breast Cancer Foundation says free screening of women from age 40 to beyond 64 could reduce breast cancer rates greatly.

New Zealand has one of the highest rates in the world and more than 600 women a year die from the disease. One in 10 women will develop it.

Of the 83,834 women screened to the end of March, 318 were diagnosed with breast cancer.

Enrolment was lowest in Auckland at 34.6 per cent and highest in Otago-Southland - where it was preceded by a pilot programme - at 49.8 per cent.

A foundation spokeswoman, Auckland breast surgeon Dr Belinda Scott, said the low national enrolment was very disappointing.

She attributed it partly to the inadequacies of cervical cancer screening highlighted at the Gisborne inquiry.

But the chairman of the monitoring group, Otago University cancer researcher Dr Brian Cox, doubted any Gisborne effect.

He suggested that enrolment in the breast-screening programme might have been hindered by the previous Government's legal interpretation that electoral rolls could not be used to identify women to invite into the scheme.

Rolls had been used initially, but only in a pilot programme, which was considered to be research.