HARRIS TEAM TACKLE SMEAR TEST SCANDAL
Orla tells of horror after developing deadly disease
A CRISIS team of senior medics has been sent in to tackle the Cervical Check scandal.
Health Minister Simon Harris, left, made the announcement last night and launched
a helpline on 1800 45 45 55 for women who suspect they are victims of the failure. It will be operational from 9am today.
He said the team was meeting last night and throughout the weekend and will report directly to the Chief Medical Officer Dr Colm Henry.
The minister has claimed Cervical Check believe the screening results in Ireland compare favourably with those of other countries.
Speaking on RTE News, he said: “I’ve sent a senior team into Cervical Check to take charge of the situation here, to take charge of making sure that any woman who may not have been told or who may have been told that her case has been audited to make sure she has been informed.
“Appointments will be offered to any woman who may not have been told and who may need a follow up conversation starting on Monday.
“Women who are watching this programme tonight, who have cervical cancer and are worried, ‘Could I have been told earlier?’, ‘Was I not informed?’ they will be hearing in the early days of next week of an appointment to meet with their clinician.”
Mr Harris told how the screening programme has saved lives and pleaded with patients to continue using the service.
However, he said he has ordered a review because the system is a decade old and said it could be better. The team will examine files and from Monday will contact 206 women identified as victims of the failure.
The move came after another woman revealed she was diagnosed with cervical cancer despite being given the all-clear.
In a case echoing Vicky Phelan’s, Orla revealed she too received false results and later went on to develop the disease.
Like the other case, she said her misdiagnosis of cervical cancer came after her smear test in 2011 and 2015 came back all clear.
Hitting out at Cervical Check Orla added she is not even sure if she is one of the 206 women with cervical cancer who had undergone tests who should have received earlier intervention.
Orla told Joe Duffy’s Lifeline: “How can anyone with a normal smear feel OK now?”
It also emerged yesterday the Health Minister does not have confidence in Cervical Check management while the organisation’s clinical director cannot say for sure all 206 patients have been contacted.
Orla said she had not even been contacted directly after her tests.
She added: “There was no communication to me, the letter was to my consultant.”
She said Cervical Check’s letter to her doctor didn’t stress the results be passed on to her but just said to put them “on file”.
Orla added: “It didn’t say anything about informing the patient, it just said make sure these go on the file.
“It did mention I was in touch about it but there was no direction to tell me.”
After Orla was diagnosed with cancer, she and her consultant went back to
Cervical
Check and insisted the earlier tests were rechecked and found they were actually positive.
This meant she went without medical intervention for over three years while the cancer developed.
This latest revelation comes in the aftermath of the controversy surrounding mother-of-two Ms Phelan who was diagnosed with cancer three years after her smear test results of 2011 were incorrectly reported as clear.
Earlier, this week she settled a High Court action for €2.5million against a US lab over her smear test.
Like Ms Phelan, Orla has now lost confidence in the screening service.
She added: “I completely concur about a lack of faith in the screening programme. I think she [Vicky] is very brave to say it.”
Meanwhile, Ms Phelan said she is glad her case has highlighted the failures in the national cervical
screening programme, and glad that action in response has been swift. But she was shocked when she heard that 206 women had been diagnosed with cervical cancer.
She told RTE News: “Oh my God, when I saw the numbers this morning I could have dropped.
“We knew there were at least 14 other women and we kind of surmised there were more that but I really didn’t think there’d be more than 40 or 50 nationally.”