Women's Health Services

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:06 pm on 13 March 2018.

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Photo of Carwyn Jones Carwyn Jones Labour 2:06, 13 March 2018

I think the Member makes a perfectly sensible suggestion, and one that needs to inform the work that we are doing with public health teams, health boards and primary care clusters to improve the screening uptake. She is quite correct in the figures that she quotes. More worryingly, Breast Test Wales have observed a gradual decline in uptake since 2007, which is a worrying—not quite a long-term trend, but enough for it to be concerning in terms of our trend over the past nine years. More than 110,000 tests are conducted as part of the programme. There need to be more, and examining why women don't take the opportunity of going through screening has to be an important part of making sure we go past that 70 per cent figure.