Almost one million missed cervical screening alerts 'a fail', says women's health advocate

Dr Bev Lawton discusses cervical cancer screening review

Health NZ's cervical screening and monitoring process has been labelled "a fail" by a women's health advocate after it was found almost a million cancer screening notifications did not get sent to eligible people.

A review by a Health NZ expert panel found more than 800,000 notifications for cervical cancer screening were not triggered and another 160,000 notifications were triggered but not sent as of June 2025.

As a result, the system was not providing a comprehensive safety net.

Women's health advocate Dr Bev Lawton disagrees with Health New Zealand, who said there's no indication of harm despite the missed alerts.

The national register was launched in September 2023, along with a change to HPV primary screening instead of a smear test.

The review, released on Monday, said the register was working satisfactorily in many ways - but the clinical safety of the register could not be assured in some situations.

The register was not making contact with everyone eligible for screening due to the way it was designed, as well as unintentional flaws in the way it was built, the review said.

Health NZ said it carried out 13,000 case reviews, and there was no indication of any harm.

However, Lawton rejected that assertion, telling Morning Report multiple aspects of the cervical screening diagnosis and monitoring process were inadequate.

She also believed there was a lack of transparency on which cases had been reviewed.

"It's been a fail and i think a big apology is needed," she said.

"The new register is not working, but it's not the only part of the pathway not working - the treatment is not reaching its target, we don't have transparency of data."

Lawton said credit did have to be given to the screening programme for calling the independent review themselves, but she believed people were being harmed by an "inadequate" register.

"It's not transparent which cases they have reviewed," Lawton said.

Lawton also called it "rubbish" to say missed notifications hadn't harmed anyone.

"We need to sort out the monitoring, get the action done, because we've got a fantastic opportunity here to eliminate this disease.

"This is all about the register and to eliminate cancer we need to prevent, screen, diagnose and treat."

Health NZ have been approached by RNZ for comment.