The pattern of cervical smear abnormalities in marginalised women in Hong Kong

"Ripple Action" and "WE Stand" are projects co-organised by the Hong Kong Women Doctors Association. The two projects organise free cervical screening for low-income women, new immigrants from Mainland China, and ethnic minority women. The objective of this study was to analyse the pattern of cervical smear abnormalities in these marginalised women.

The study group consisted of 1189 marginalised women who participated in a free cervical screening campaign, including 324 low-income local Chinese, 540 new immigrants from Mainland China, and 325 ethnic minority women. The comparison group consisted of 1141 local Chinese who attended a well women clinic. The prevalence of cervical smear abnormalities was compared using Chi squared test.

In the study group, 42.6% of women had never had a cervical smear. Compared with the comparison group, they had a significantly higher prevalence of cervical smear abnormalities (13.7% vs 1.4%; P<0.001), including atypical smear (10.8% vs 0.5%; P<0.001), low-grade lesion (1.8% vs 0.8%; P=0.036), and high-grade lesion (1.1% vs 0.1%; P=0.002). Logistic regression analysis showed that the strongest predictors for abnormal cervical smear were being South Asian (odds ratio=11.859; 95% confidence interval, 4.635-30.341), South-East Asian (6.484; 3.192-13.171), or new immigrant from Mainland China (6.253; 2.463-15.877).

Marginalised women had a significantly higher prevalence of cervical smear abnormality than the general population and almost half had never had a cervical smear before. Outreach strategies are needed to enrol this population into screening programmes.