Women who miss their cancer screening at the clinic will now be offered home ...

The DIY smear test: Women who miss their cancer screening at the clinic will now be offered home kits in the post Kits will let women take their own sample in the comfort of their own home  Officials hope it will boost screening coverage by reaching more women Around 3,200 British women are diagnosed with cervical cancer every year Experts say another 2,000 women would die without the screening programme 

By Kate Pickles, Health Correspondent For The Daily Mail

Published: 22:00 GMT, 20 March 2019 | Updated: 22:01 GMT, 20 March 2019

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Women will be offered DIY smear tests in a bid to cut cervical cancer deaths.

Kits will be sent to women in the post, enabling them to take their own sample at home and return it to the NHS.

Officials hope it will boost screening coverage by reaching women who have ignored invitations for tests because of embarrassment or difficulties getting an appointment. The pilot scheme was announced as NHS England revealed that cervical screening administration will return ‘in-house’ from June.

The decision follows a series of screening blunders, including outsourcing firm Capita’s failure to send invitations or test results to 50,000 patients last year.

Women not wanting to go through the traditional process of a smear test at their local surgery (pictured above) may be able to opt for a kit to be sent to their home address

Women not wanting to go through the traditional process of a smear test at their local surgery (pictured above) may be able to opt for a kit to be sent to their home address

Uptake rates for cervical screening are the lowest in 21 years, with nearly a third of women ignoring their last appointment letters.

At the moment a smear test involves testing for abnormalities in the cells on the cervix.

But the test is currently being changed to test first for the HPV virus,with a follow-up examination if the virus is present.

This is currently being rolled out across the NHS, and by December 2019 all women in Britain will be able to get it. Professor Sir Mike Richards, who is leading a review of cancer screening, told MPs that the DIY tests will follow a scheme tried in the Netherlands, where postal kits boosted uptake.

‘We may get to a different segment of the population by offering HPV self-sampling sets through the post,’ he told the Commons public accounts committee.

Home testing has been made possible by the creation of a more sensitive cervical test which uses a swab to test for the HPV virus.

Health officials said the self-sample pilot schemes are likely to involve women who have missed screening, with a kit sent to them within a month of a failure to respond to an

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