Monthly coverage data

Background

An organised National Cervical Screening Programme (NCSP ) was established in New Zealand in 1990, to reduce the number of women who develop and die from cervical cancer. The Programme recommends regular cervical screening at three yearly intervals for women aged between 20 and 69 years who have ever been sexually active. The Health Act 1956, as amended by Part 4A in 2004, underpins the NCSP's operations to ensure the co-ordination of a high quality screening programme for all women in New Zealand.

Ongoing systematic monitoring is a requirement of an organised screening programme. Such monitoring allows the performance of the Programme to be evaluated and corrective action to be taken as required. Monitoring is carried out through a set of indicators which cover all aspects of the screening pathway, including participation of women, their clinical outcomes, NCSP provider performance and the performance of the Programme overall.

Coverage data should be read in conjunction with the NCSP biannual monitoring reports to provide more information on NCSP monitoring and Programme performance across the screening pathway. The technical specifications for calculating NCSP indicators are also available for download.

NCSP Targets

Information about the NCSP targets can be found in the following documents:

Setting Outcome Targets for the National Cervical Screening Programme

National Cervical Screening Programme: Targets for 2006 and 2011

NCSP Monthly Coverage Data

Coverage is now being reported for women 25 - 69 years at the end of each reporting period. For more information on the recent changes to the statistical methods used to calculate coverage please read Cervical screening coverage: An update on calculation methods - March 2013