WOMEN aged 25 and over are being encouraged to contact their GP about cervical screenings as part of Cervical Cancer Prevention Week, which started yesterday.

Bradford Council’s Public Health department said it estimated more than 40 per cent of women aged 25 to 49 in the city centre area, and around a quarter of women elsewhere in the district, had not had a cervical screening within the last three and a half years.

Around 20 per cent of women across the district aged 50 and over were said to have gone five and a half years without being screened.

Ralph Saunders, head of public health for Bradford Council, said: “Cervical cancer is the most common type of cancer in women under 35, and is unusual because rates don’t just increase with age.

“There is a spike in the number of women in their early thirties who develop the disease.

“Cervical screening is not a test for cancer, but is a method of preventing cancer by detecting and treating early abnormalities which can prevent the disease before it gets started.”