Cancer Council Victoria launched the “In Your Hands” cervical screening campaign this month. It continues a decades-long effort to improve the prevention and early detection of cervical cancer in Victoria and maintains our vision of cervical cancer being eliminated in this state by as early as 2030, through HPV vaccination, screening, and treatment.
When Cancer Council Victoria made its first investments in hashtag #cervical hashtag #cancer control in the 1940s, no one imagined that in 2024 we would be planning its elimination. But the potential improvements to early detection offered by the cervical “Pap” smear were evident, even if controversial. Some believed false positives could create “cancerphobia”. But hope of easing suffering from a common cancer was too powerful.
We funded Melbourne doctors travel to New York to learn the test from its inventor and namesake Georgios Papanikolaou. In 1959, we invested £8,000 (now approx. $300,000) towards Australia’s first cytology service at the Royal Women’s Hospital. In 1964, we donated £25,000 ($850,000) to creating the Victorian Cytology Gynaecological Service to provide free cervical screening services across the state. It examined 70,000 smears in its first 18 months.
Through the 1970s, record-linkage and workforce capacity hindered efforts to expand cervical screening state-wide. Our then CEO, Nigel Gray, led advocacy for a cervical screening registry, and training doctors and pathologists in the smear test. He was aided in 1975 by Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s first national health insurance scheme, which allowed testing to be offered free to all women.
This foundational work was vital to the launch of the National Cervical Screening Program in 1991, which provided free testing every two years for those aged 18-69.
Since then, astounding achievements in cervical cancer science revealed the link to HPV and development a vaccine, changing the screening and prevention strategy. Most cervical cancers are now vaccine preventable and hashtag #HPV testing permits screening just once every five years. Women and people with a cervix now have the choice to self-collect their sample – a transformation for improving access.
All of this has put Victoria on track to reach elimination by 2030. In 2020, to support these efforts, we established our Eliminating Cervical Cancer Fund and committed an initial $2 million to achieving this target. We thank our generous donors and supporters who have contributed to the Fund, including Freemasons Foundation Victoria.
To achieve this incredible goal, we must still address the inequities of cervical cancer, which sees people of low socioeconomic status, who are culturally and linguistically diverse, live in rural areas, or are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, suffering far more. Meeting their needs drives our efforts today and into the future.
We are dedicated to completing the task we began nearly 80 years ago: to eliminate cervical cancer in Victoria.
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