National Screening Unit Quarterly Monitoring

Latest Quarterly Monitoring Reports for Screening Programmes Released

The eighth quarterly monitoring report for BreastScreen Aotearoa (BSA) and the second quarterly monitoring report for the National Cervical Screening Programme (NCSP) were released on to the National Screening Unit (NSU) website this week.

NSU Clinical Director Dr Julia Peters says both national screening programmes operate in accordance with rigorous quality standards and are routinely monitored by programme monitoring groups. "Routine monitoring of national screening programmes is essential to ensure quality and enables problems to be identified and resolved at an early stage", Dr Peters says.

The reports provided by the programme monitoring groups contain analysis of data over a three-month period and represents one of a number of tools that are drawn upon to develop the national screening programmes. The reports cover the period 1 January to 31 March 2001.

"The messages for New Zealand women are still the same. In terms of breast screening, early detection is a woman's best protection. All eligible women aged between 50 and 64 should have mammograms every two years. While women aged 20 to 69 years should have regular three yearly smears."

The NCSP Monitoring Plan, which outlines the role of the NCSP Independent Monitoring Group, was endorsed by the Gisborne Inquiry Report, which called for its implementation within twelve months.

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