# Fewer women invited for breast cancer screening amid staff shortage

> Almost 1.2 million women were invited for breast cancer screening last year, more than 6% fewer than a year earlier, because of a staff shortage at the screening programmes.

Society · published 2026-11-03 10:59 · https://nlnow.nl/a/fewer-women-invited-for-breast-cancer-screening-amid-staff-shortage/

Almost 1.2 million women received an invitation for breast cancer screening last year, more than 6% fewer than the year before. Almost 820,000 of the invited women came to the screening.

A shortage of staff at the population screening programmes (bevolkingsonderzoeken) means fewer women can be invited, RIVM says, and so fewer women take part.

Patricia Hugen, who heads the population screenings at RIVM, says the decline is mainly down to delays in being able to send invitations because of a tight labour market.

In total, just over 4.1 million invitations went out last year for the three cancer screenings. About 2.7 million people took part in at least one: they sent in a stool test (bowel cancer), had an X-ray of the breasts (breast cancer), or used a self-test or had a smear taken at the GP (cervical cancer).

**Bowel cancer screening sent the most invitations last year** (million invitations, rounded; source: RIVM)

- Bowel cancer: 2.2
- Breast cancer: 1.2
- Cervical cancer: 0.7

## Background

- **RIVM (Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieu)**: The National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, the government institute that monitors infectious diseases, runs the national vaccination programmes and measures air quality and nitrogen deposition.

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