Chch group seeks grant

Press, 25 January 1988, Page 5

Chch group seeks grant

A Christchurch group has applied for Health Department funding to begin a pilot cervical screening programme.

The Christchurch Coalition for Cervical Screening is among 20 applicants for a $90,000 department grant to begin a pilot scheme using lay people to take cervical smears.

The grant will establish a three-year pilot screening programme designed to encourage low-income women to have regular screening tests. The department is expected to announce its decision on which group will run the programme next month.

The Christchurch coalition has reported in its application that in one low-income Christchurch suburb, women did not feel comfortable with a male doctor. It has also

claimed that no consideration was made for different cultural groups. The group wanted to run a financially accessible screening service which would also take blood pressures and do breast examinations alongside health information sessions to explain the need for regular cervical screening. The clinics, staffed by nurses, doctors or trained women, would be held in Plunket rooms, halls, schools, workplaces and maraes.

Another Christchurchbased group, The Health Alternatives for Women, carried out a programme of cervical smear tests using lay workers in 1984. The programme was halted six months after it began after a complaint to the Health Department by a doctor.