“It was much better than 13 years ago when I had my last one, which was quite painful,” she added.
“This wasn’t painful at all. Much easier than I thought.”
Jean said “anxiety” and “the embarrassment of the process” had put her off attending and she said she wanted to encourage people to “get over that, like I did today”.
The areas with the lowest take-up in Salford tended to be Lower and Higher Broughton, Ordsall and around the Pendleton Gateway area including Langworthy, the trust reported.
The mobile breast screening units, including one located on Pendleton Gateway in Salford, were among the measures being used by Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust to tackle the issue.
The unit in Salford moves to Irlam and Walkden over the three years screening cycle, the trust said.
Fazia Choudhury, who leads on breast screening in Salford, said: “We’ll hear actually ‘we didn’t attend because it was too far for us’ so we’re like, right, okay, we could bring the mobile unit to make it more accessible to people.”
She said the trust also worked with community groups to put on free tea and coffee events where they could talk to a variety of people to understand any barriers or concerns around breast screening.
