‘HSE blocking cancer test victims from getting vital evidence’
Patient’s situation ‘just like tragic Emma’
VICTIMS of the Cervicalcheck scandal are being blocked from accessing their smear slides to have them independently analysed by medical experts.
The shocking delay is preventing dying women getting their cases to court.
The Irish Mirror has learned a seriously ill woman with “a situation exactly like Emma Mhic Mhathuna” has had to threaten the HSE with court action because it is stopping her getting her hands on this crucial evidence. Her solicitor Caoimhe Haughey said six months after the State vowed to support victims, “nobody gives a damn”.
The Dublin-based lawyer added: “I have one lady who is exactly like Emma Mhic Mhathuna, God rest her. Her slide situation goes back to 2010.
“I am banging my head off a brick wall trying to get access to them [her misread slides].
“She is very seriously ill and for two weeks I have been backwards and forwards.”
When the scandal erupted last April, Health Minister
Simon Harris said: “I want to assure the public I am equally furious and there will be nowhere to hide, there will be accountability.”
But Ms Haughey insisted: “Nobody gives a damn about them, that’s my opinion, and if it wasn’t for Vicky
Phelan, Stephen Teap and Lorraine Walsh, and thank God for their articulate, strong voices, the attention I believe would be gone off the individual victims who are at the heart of all this.”
She claims the State is “wearing down” the victims and families who just want answers. Ms Haughey added: “There is no point in trying to engage with the National Screening Service in relation to access to slides.”
This woman was not identified as one of the 221 victims in the audit that was revealed in April following Vicky Phelan’s High Court case. But Ms Haughey insisted she should have been. She said: “From what I have seen, investigating her case, looking at the information that is available so far with regard to her smears.
“It does not make sense to me why she was not part of the audit.”
Another shocking blunder also saw some of these vital slides sent to the wrong place. Dad-of-six Ben Lawless, whose late wife Edel was one of the victims of the fiasco, was forced to wait five months to get her slides and they were sent to the wrong hospital for independent analysis. Ms Haughey said: “Her first anniversary was just last week.
“We had been looking for her slides since last May and I got them in September and they were sent to the wrong hospital.”
A HSE spokesperson said last night: “You will appreciate we will endeavour to get a response for you but this is unlikely to be today.”
Nobody gives a damn about them.
That’s my opinion
CAOIMHE HAUGHEY
DUBLIN YESTERDAY