NEW SMEAR SCANDAL AS 60,000 WAIT ON RESULTS
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YOU’VE heard of the icloud, but how’s this for an eye cloud?
Nicola Nicholas, who owns Sandhurst Vineyards in Kent with her family, took this picture of the face formation as they picked grapes used in Chapel THE Cervicalcheck crisis is creating more chaos for women with a shocking backlog of more than 60,000 smear tests in the system.
And the processing time has more than trebled with some people waiting 18 weeks to receive their results.
The figures released to RTE’S Morning Ireland by the HSE show the upsurge in testing in the wake of the scandal.
It comes a week after tragic Emma Mhic Mhathuna passed away following her misdiagnosis in 2016.
The HSE said sorry for the Down’s sparkling wine. The clouds formed two deep eye sockets with the pupils looking down, and there was the vague outline of a nose and cheekbone above the well-defined, dark shape of a mouth.
Nicola, 55, said the formation hung in the sky for delays and confirmed that between May and September this year there were 42,469 repeat tests taken.
It added: “We would like to apologise to those patients affected and assure them everything possible is being done to improve the situation.” It was revealed more than 86,210 test samples are still in progress – 60,000 at least seven minutes. She said: “We were picking Chardonnay grapes and all saw this amazing face looking down at us.
“It was very, very weird. It was like a divine power was looking down on us.” more than would expected at any time.
Ann Kelly, 42, from Co Cork, told Morning Ireland she waited 17 weeks for an inconclusive smear test and required a further one.
The mother of four is now facing a lengthy wait for the results.
She said: “I was ringing the GP practice every two weeks to see was there any updates.
“They didn’t know be normally any more either. The weeks were just growing. It’s been 17 weeks already waiting and another 17 weeks, which is eight months waiting for a simple smear result.”
The HSE said it had asked the labs to hire more staff and to manage annual leave to help address the backlog.
It added: “As part of our ongoing negotiations with the laboratories we are trying to source additional screening capacity within the laboratory network, which would help improve the turnaround time.”
Number of repeat tests taken between May and September this year