Critics sniping at brave mother
VICKY Phelan is stepping back from campaigning on the CervicalCheck controversy after suffering a backlash for her efforts.
Ms Phelan, the terminally ill woman whose legal battle exposed the cancer-screening shambles, took to Twitter to say some commentators would be ‘glad to know’ of her decision to step back.
‘I am deeply disturbed by the lack of empathy in some quarters towards the women and families affected by the scandal,’ she tweeted to her 10,000 followers.
Ms Phelan said people were ‘condemning’ her for damaging the country’s cervicalscreening programme.
The mother of two said she had always used the system and had ‘never missed a smear’. Before being diagnosed with cervical cancer in 2014, she had never had any abnormal smear tests, she said.
Ms Phelan said she wants a screening process women can trust, especially the daughter she ‘will be leaving behind’. She said she only found out three years after her diagnosis that a 2011 smear was ‘full of cancer’.
She said: ‘If my smear in 2011 had been correctly read, I would only have had to have a hysterectomy and would have had a 90% change of being cured.
‘I will be fighting to stay alive for the rest of my life, so forgive me if I am angry and upset and fighting for change.
‘So get off your high horses and help me to change and to ensure that we have a screening programme that we can trust.’
Ms Phelan had settled her case with the US lab that analysed her smear tests for €2.5million in April.