Title

Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on cervical cancer screening in Bangladesh: A registry-based study

Authors

Shirin Akter Begum¹,*, Tasfia Mahmud², Mehriban Amatullah³, Nasrin Akter⁴, Irin Haque⁵, Afroza Khanom⁶, Mahenaz Afroz⁷ & Ashrafun Nessa¹

Affiliation

¹Department of Gynecological Oncology, Bangladesh Medical University, Dhaka, Bangladesh; ²Department of Pharmacology, Dr. Sirajul Islam Medical College, Dhaka, Bangladesh; ³Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Bangladesh Medical University, Dhaka, Bangladesh; ⁴Department of OSD, Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), Dhaka, Bangladesh; ⁵Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), Dhaka, Bangladesh; ⁶Department of Gynecological Oncology, National Institute of Cancer Research & Hospital (NICRH), Dhaka, Bangladesh; ⁷Department of Gynecological Oncology, National Institute of Cancer Research & Hospital (NICRH), Dhaka, Bangladesh; *Corresponding author

Email

Shirin Akter Begum- E-mail: shirin.bsmmu@gmail.com
Tasfia Mahmud- E-mail: tasfiaaa@gmail.com
Mehriban Amatullah- E-mail: amatullah.mehriban@gmail.com
Nasrin Akter - E-mail: dr.popy_comc@yahoo.com
Irin Haque- E-mail: irin.haque@gmail.com
Afroza Khanom- E-mail: afroza_dr@yahoo.com
Mahenaz Afroz- E-mail: mahenaz_gyn@yahoo.com
Ashrafun Nessa- E-mail: ashra58@yahoo.co.uk

Article Type

Research Article

Date

Received September 1, 2026; Revised September 30, 2026; Accepted September 30, 2026, Published September 30, 2026
 

Abstract

Cervical cancer screening coverage among women in Bangladesh has remained insufficient to meet the screening needs required for cervical cancer elimination. Therefore, it is of interest to evaluate the cervical cancer screening coverage among Bangladesh women aged ≥30 years during 2012–2022. Coverage increased from 1.53% (2012) to 52.16% (2018), declined from 44.54% (2019) to 40.07% (2020) and rebounded to 95.08% by 2022. Despite screening 3.7 million women, an estimated backlog of 13.7 million remained from the previous target population. Based on the 2022 census, 13,715,782 women require screening by 2030, requiring approximately 1.7 million women to be screened annually. Thus, data shows that program resilience and the need for strategic planning to achieve the WHO cervical cancer elimination target.

Keywords

COVID-19 pandemic, cervical cancer screening, screening disruption, screening strategy

Citation

Begum et al. Bioinformation 22(9): 6136-6141 (2026)

Edited by

Ritik Kashwani

ISSN

0973-2063

Publisher

Biomedical Informatics

License

This is an Open Access article which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. This is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.