The issue of participation in cervical cancer screening programmes in the United Kingdom and Greece: A systematic literature review

Background: Cervical cancer, the second most common cancer among women worldwide, is an important public health issue. Even though it is considered a preventable and treatable disease due to the fact that it takes years to develop, more than 300.000 deaths are caused by cervical cancer every year, 20% of which have been occurred in developed countries. Cervical cancer screening strategies have been introduced by well-organised national programmes. These programmes include primary and/or secondary prevention strategies focusing on the health promotion, HPV vaccination and screening tests. Most worrying though, is that cervical cancer has also been observed in young women. Aim: This research aims to examine the organised cervical cancer screening programmes in the UK and Greece not only as a key strategy to reduce the incidence rates but also as a process of working on the self, promoting the personal responsibility in participating in the screening tests. Methods: In order to identify relevant studies, a systematic review of qualitative research on the cervical cancer screening tests in the UK and Greece was undertaken. This review consists of two stages; searching for the literature and applying the selection criteria based on relevance and actuality. The data were collected from electronic databases and the Erasmus University Library and consisted of peer-reviewed articles, gray literature and books. Findings: This search strategy generated 36 relevant articles which were assessed based on quality assessment criteria. 28 of the studies met the quality criteria and were included and utilized for the analysis demonstrating that even though the UK and Greece have a National Health Service they provide different cervical cancer screening tests. The results of the review also showed that both countries perform poorly on the prevention education especially among adolescents. Conclusions: This systematic review depicted and emphasized the need for advanced health education in both countries especially in school-based programmes in order to increase the awareness of cervical cancer risk factors and raise the participation in diagnostic tests. In addition, the results concluded that proper information creates a sense of self-management and personal responsibility to the population in order to become active agents of the society.