What preventive measures can be recommended to patients to reduce the risk of cervical cancer?

Preventive measures to reduce the risk of cervical cancer include:

• Encouraging women aged 25–64 years to participate regularly in the NHS cervical screening programme, which detects precancerous lesions early and allows effective treatment to prevent invasive cancer and associated morbidity and mortality.
• Recommending HPV vaccination for girls aged 12–13 years as part of the national childhood immunization programme, ideally before they become sexually active, to provide protection against HPV types that cause cervical cancer and other anogenital cancers.
• Advising sexually active girls and women to use barrier methods of contraception such as condoms to reduce the risk of HPV infection, while noting that condom use reduces but does not fully eliminate HPV transmission risk.
• Encouraging limiting the number of sexual partners to reduce potential exposure to HPV infection.

These measures collectively help prevent HPV infection, the main cause of cervical cancer, and enable early detection and treatment of precancerous changes.

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