Deaths from cervical cancer began falling before screening programmes were established

An author's error occurred in this letter by A E Raffle (11 October, p 853). The penultimate sentence of the third paragraph begins: “Department of Health statistics show that in England and Wales each year about 800 000 women have abnormal smears.” The words “each year” should have been omitted. In fact, 800 000 is the total number of women with abnormal smears; the number of abnormal smears each year in England is 209 446.