A mum from West Belfast is calling for HPV screening to be routinely used as the primary cervical cancer screening in Northern Ireland as she said a chance check during a recent smear test saved her life.
Nichola Denver, 45, went for her smear test on June 24 and said she "didn't think anything of it" as she had never missed a test since she first went in her 20s.
Seven weeks later, on September 7, Nichola was called by her doctor who told her abnormal cells had been found in her cervix and that she was HPV positive. Not knowing what HPV was, she was told certain strains of it can cause cancer, and that one of these had been discovered in her test.
