BreastScreen Aotearoa is New Zealand’s free national breast screening programme for women aged between 45 and 69.

What is breast screening?

• Breast screening is when a mammogram (breast x-ray) is performed on women with no obvious breast changes.
• Breast screening can find cancer early and that means you have a better chance of beating it
• It can pick up tiny cancers that can't be felt
• You need to have breast screening every two years as breast cancers can grow in that time and you want to find them while they are still small
• Screening mammograms cannot prevent development of breast cancer, but do reduce the chance of dying from breast cancer by approximately a third.