Katherine Tran was just 26 years-old when she was told she had cervical cancer.
“I actually went to see my GP for a flu check,” she told SBS News.
“A week later they found some cancer cells in my cervix and immediately after that, I had to get a biopsy done.”
Ms Tran, a Sydney-based IT worker, was told she had stage-one A cancer. She’s now telling her personal story to urge all women to get checked.
“The symptoms can be quite minimal, like you won't even notice it, it's very important even if you don't feel any symptoms to get checked,” she said.
For Ms Tran, cervical cancer was not something widely spoken of among the Vietnamese community.
“It's such a personal, personal issue, that no-one, especially in an Asian culture will want to open up about it,” she said.
But now she's changing that, using her story to urge women of all backgrounds to get pap smears.
An updated screening program is expected to reduce deaths from the disease by at least 20 per cent.
It can be taken every five years instead of two, and will now detect for HPV, the virus which causes cervical cancer.
The NSW Cancer Council claims it’s a more accurate test.
“It picks up any abnormal changes one step earlier than the traditional pap smear and that means it gives women better protection against cervical cancer and they actually have to screen less often,” the Council’s Karen Canfell, who was part of the research team that drove the changes, told SBS News.
It's also good news for women of multicultural backgrounds, who are among those with historically low screening rates.
“And unfortunately that does mean lower screening rates have translated in the past to higher rates of cervical cancer in certain groups,” Ms Canfell said.
Deborah Bateson from Family Planning NSW, who works in clinics in Western Sydney to raise awareness about cancer screening, said there are many cultural barriers that impede some women from getting tests.
“There's obviously a lot of migrant women coming in who may not be immediately aware (of the screening) and luckily we work with many different services so everyone is raising awareness and that women know about the program.
“There can be some of those cultural barriers and women can feel embarrassed or worried about it or anxious about it.
“The good thing to now there’s excellent services like family planning where you can come along and we've got resources in different languages- we use interpreters, of course, to make people feel as comfortable as possible.”
The Health Education Manager at the Multicultural Centre for Women's Health, Amira Rahmanovic said it’s important to raise awareness about getting regular screenings.
"In most of the cases they don't have information, they don't know about it, they don't know about the services in the neighbourhoods where they can go. Sometimes even if they know, they're really scared how all this will look - is it uncomfortable, is it painful, is there going to be a female doctor, all of that."
Providing a safe space where women can talk freely is just as vital.
"We talk about pap smears, and screenings, breast screenings, and all other aspects of women's health in the language of the women and the cultural context, which makes a huge difference because they then feel comfortable asking questions and asking all the things they were reluctant to ask anybody else."
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