My wife DiDn’t Deserve to Die
TRIXIE Gough was among 450,000 women who never received an invitation for breast screening which might have saved her life. She died in 2015, just days after her 76th birthday.
Her husband Brian, 77, from Norfolk, said yesterday he had no idea of the extent of the scandal until Jeremy Hunt admitted to the NHS failure.
He said: “I was gobsmacked and knew straight away Trix was one of the people never given a scan. I’m devastated.
“I’m amazed it has taken them the best part of a decade to spot the problem. It’s extraordinary. There are thousands of real people involved in this, people like Trixie, who didn’t deserve to lose their lives.
“We worked all our lives and this was the time we wanted to enjoy together. That’s not possible now. She’s gone and I live alone.”
Mrs Gough failed to receive notification to make an appointment for screening by the time she was 71. In October 2010 she found a breast lump and a scan revealed cancer.
She had surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy, but the cancer returned after two years and she died on December 28 2015.
The screening shambles has highlighted a NHS recruitment crisis.
Experts say more than 200 mammographers and at least 50 radiologists are needed urgently.
Baroness Delyth Morgan, CEO of Breast Cancer Now, called the scandal “a devastating error”.
And Professor Helen StokesLampard of the Royal College of GPs said: “We are shocked to learn hundreds of thousands of women in England missed out on their breast screening.
“The implications for GPs and our teams will potentially be significant as patients seek reassurance and to find out where they go from here.”