The Screening Gap: Too Many Women Have Never Been Screened
Across LAC, millions of women aged 30-49 have never had a cervical cancer screening test. In Haiti, 90% have never been screened. In Brazil, 42%. Even where screening exists, many women are screened once and never return: in Peru, only 16% were screened last year, but 75% within the last five years. Closing this gap is the most actionable lever for reducing cervical cancer deaths.
Dumbbell chart showing cervical cancer screening coverage for 32 LAC countries, with two dots per country: "Last Year" (left, darker) and "Lifetime" (right, lighter), connected by a line. Countries are sorted by gap size. Peru has the largest gap: 16% last year vs. 89% lifetime (73 percentage points). Uruguay follows at 27% vs. 93% (66 pp). At the bottom, Haiti shows the smallest gap at 2% vs. 10% (8 pp), reflecting consistently low coverage rather than measurement differences. Barbados has both the highest last-year rate (57%) and near-highest lifetime rate (96%). The chart shows that most countries have gaps of 40-60 percentage points between the two measures.
