For the victims’ sake, we must get the truth

IT has become all too grim a story, and one we no doubt sadly will hear again. On Liveline yesterday, a woman who identified herself only as Orla, told how she received the all-clear from two smear tests before being diagnosed with cervical cancer in 2016. The disease now has spread to her lymph nodes.

It is a brutally distressing reminder that behind all the attempts at turning the CervicalCheck scandal into a political football, this essentially is a human story, that of women failed by the system that was established to protect them.

It is in everyone’s interest that we get to the bottom of how this happened, and quickly, in order that we can put in place structures and oversight that will ensure it never happens again.

With so much at stake, it is unthinkable that all the relevant agencies would drag their heels providing the requested easily searched information to Dr Gabriel Scally, who is heading the scoping exercise into the misread smears and the role of CervicalCheck in withholding information for two years after the 2014 audit.

Let us not forget, there are 209 women involved. Each is someone’s daughter, many are wives and mothers, and so the impact is felt much more widely in families and communities across the country.

We know that no smear test ever can prove with 100% accuracy that a woman will not develop cervical cancer, but in the 209 cases, the signs were there, and they were missed or overlooked, whether accidentally or negligently.

That simply is not good enough. For Orla, and Vicky Phelan, for Emma Mhic Mhathúna and the family of the late Irene Teap, and for all the women who have died already or face terminal diagnoses, we must do better.

The scoping exercise must receive unqualified cooperation. This is not an academic exercise. This is about real human lives.