The European Union (EU) statistics related to cancer screening for breast cancer, cervical cancer and colorectal cancer show Latvia to be be lagging behind many other countries, particularly the Nordic members of the EU.
Data on breast cancer screening rates are available for 23 EU countries, generally for 2022. Among these EU countries, screening rates were below 40.0% in five countries, including Latvia, with the lowest share of 28.5% reported in Slovakia. Denmark (2021 data), Finland and Sweden reported screening rates of over 80%, while Slovenia also had a rate that was above 75%.
Data are available for 20 EU countries, generally for 2022 (2021 for Denmark, France and Hungary) for cervical cancer. Screening rates peaked above three quarters (78.8%) in Sweden and nearly reached three quarters in Czechia (74.1%) and Ireland (73.1%). At the other end of the range, the proportion of women who had been screened for cervical cancer was 10.9% in Poland, 4.5% in Romania. Latvia did considerably better in this regard, with a rate of well over 40%.
On colorectal cancer the data is less encouraging. Screening rates for 2022 are available for 18 EU countries (2021 for Denmark and 2019 data for Germany). Screening rates were above 50.0% in 8 of these countries, reaching 77.3% in Finland and 68.4% in the Netherlands. Rates below 20.0% were observed in Latvia (19.1%), Germany (15.0%; 2019 data) and Hungary (8.1%).
