PATRICIA Burton remembers the horror of picking up the post and finding her GP's card recalling her to the surgery after an abnormal cervical smear result.

"It was terrifying. It was a year after I got married and I just panicked over it. I automatically assumed it was cancer," says Patricia, a secondary school teacher from Shincliffe, Durham.

She found herself thinking the worst at the age of 25 but, although the harrowing experience of being recalled time and again through the years since her initial test is one that sticks in her head, she is incredibly grateful for the availability of regular screening.

"The recalling went on for years and years because nearly every three-yearly test would be abnormal. It culminated 15 years ago in an examination at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Gateshead," says the mother of two. "I was wired up to a TV screen and the doctors froze something they found there and then and took it out."

Patricia had to go back every six months until she was out of the danger zone and has had clear smear tests every since.

Experts agree with Patricia when she says the screening may well have saved her from developing cancerous cells. Her abnormality was detected early enough, but no one knows what might have happened if she had ignored the screening process.

Happily, Patricia is part of a majority of women who turn up to their GP's surgery for a routine check-up that could potentially save their life, but there is a minority who never come for the brief, yet essential, check-ups.

Women have come a long way in realising the life-saving necessity of cervical screening - the majority of eligible North-East women aged between 20 to 64 get themselves in to surgeries or family planning clinics for their three-yearly check-up.

The nation has a lot to thank campaigning Northern Echo editor Harold Evans for; he fought to make free cervical smears available to every woman in the 1960s, at a time when tests were not usual practice. His North-East pilot scheme proved so successful it was extended across the nation.

But there is still a faceless minority which, despite campaigns to raise awareness, continues to duck out of the vital life-saving test.

Last year, 85 per cent of the 541,249 population on Teesside attended cervical screenings, leaving 81,199 who fall through the net. More worryingly, 13,980 Teesside women - 9.2 per cent of the population - have had no recorded history of smears at all.

Meanwhile, 85 per cent of County Durham and Darlington's 150,000 eligible women have had a routine check, though 22,500 have turned a blind eye to it in the past five years - just under 15 per cent.

From the 115,200 women eligible in Newcastle and North Tyneside, 84.1 per cent have been screened in the past five years and GPs are urging all women to respond to appointments. Gateshead and South Tyneside has an 85.7 per cent coverage of eligible women in 1999 to 2000.

While some experts believe the reason some women are test-shy is down to embarrassment, others claim it is through ignorance or the stigma of having screening for a cancer linked with multiple sexual partners.

Dr Anne Szarewski, senior clinic research fellow at Imperial Cancer Research Fund, believes this reluctance is partly due to the myth that cervical cancer is a promiscuous woman's disease.

"It didn't help the situation when Edwina Curry said 'if you screw around, you get cervical cancer' a few years ago. The legacy behind that statement is still living on. Some women say to themselves, 'I'm not going for screening because I'm not a loose woman'."

Dr Szarewski is involved in research trials into self-screening examinations which involve a swab that a woman can administer in the privacy of her own bathroom. "If it's effective, it could be in use in about two years and it'll appeal to all those groups, such as ethnic minority women, who are reluctant to come to the surgery now."

She says a fear of the word cancer may also keep women away but figures for the North and Yorkshire show, out of 2,045 smear test results in April to June 1999, only two detected cancer.

Dr Szarewski also stressed smoking is linked to cervical cancer and, with smoking levels higher among North-East women than other parts of the country, the risk could be increased.

Cervical cytology head for Durham and Darlington Health Authority, Les Featherstone, says ten per cent, or 15,000, of eligible women in the region have never been screened and, depressingly, this is the high-risk bracket which produces the cervical cancer deaths - deaths which can usually be avoided by a simple smear.

Experts across Teesside, Durham and Tyneside have been initiating a range of pioneering schemes to lure women to come to screenings and make their waiting time as brief as possible if they are called for further tests.

Consultant Dr Deborah Beere says non-attenders tend to be at opposite ends of the age spectrum.

"Younger women in their twenties tend to be concerned it's going to hurt and this could put them off. And older, menopausal women who may be widowed and haven't been sexually active for a while can often find the procedure embarrassing," says Dr Beere, associate medical director in contraception and reproductive health.

She has helped set up a mobile screening unit staffed by two female nurses that will be in Middlesbrough and Redcar this month.

County Durham and Darlington Health Authority have halved the mortality rate connected with cervical cancer in the last 12 years through initiatives. Meanwhile, the Northern Gynaecological Oncology Centre based at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Gateshead, has reduced the time between a colposcopic examination and informing a patient of the biopsy result after an abnormal smear from two weeks to two hours with a pioneering £25,000 machine.

Gateshead and South Tyneside have put aside funding for a publicity blitz at the end of the summer to inform women and look at setting up alternative sites where they can go to be screened.

Dr John Canning, GP at the Cleveland Centre in Middlesbrough, says scare stories about botched tests or undetected cancers certainly do nothing to ally the fears of North-East women. He says anxious women can come in and have the procedure explained to them beforehand, so the fear factor is minimised.

But despite the campaigns, reassurances and positive publicity, some still can't bring themselves round to going regularly. A 29-year-old woman from Stockton says she is lax about attending because of an irrational fear.

"I remember I was always quite anxious about going and my sister fainted after she had her first one which scared me. I've stayed off going for a smear for quite a few year, even though I know I shouldn't..."

* For information or advice about screening, phone the contraception and reproductive health service on 01642 459583