28 February 2017 - The Federal Department of Health has reached agreement with representatives of the Australian Pathology providers which will ensure that women will be able to continue to access the current Pap Test to screen for cervical cancer until a new testing program begins on December 1 2017.

Last week I announced that, due to the complexity of assimilating and migrating data from eight state and territory cancer registers into one register, the start date for Australia’s first National Cancer Screening Register has been delayed. This meant also that the introduction of the new cervical cancer screening test would also be delayed as the new testing regime was contingent on the establishment of the new national register.

Following this announcement there was some speculation that pathology providers would not have the workforce or capacity to continue to offer the current Pap Test as they had restructured their businesses to provide the new test.

Read Commonwealth Chief Medical Officer press release