Terminally ill cancer patient to query CervicalCheck screenings

RUTH Morrissey, one of the women caught up in the CervicalCheck scandal, has queried the operation and the quality assurance standards of the national screening programme.

She has asked the High Court to order the HSE to hand over a number of documents which her counsel said went to the heart of her case.

But the HSE countered that she was trying to broaden her case, and said that if she was challenging the smear testing system it would delay her legal action – set to resume next month.

Mrs Morrissey, 37, and her husband Paul are suing the HSE and the two labs which wrongly analysed her routine smear tests in 2009 and 2012 for alleged negligence and breach of duty.

The mother of one from Monaleen, Co. Limerick, was told her cancer is terminal but that she would have had a less than 1% chance of developing invasive cancer had pre-cancerous changes in her cervix been correctly reported and treated back in 2009.

A review of her two smear tests was conducted by laboratories Quest Diagnostics and Medlab Pathology following her diagnosis of cancer in 2014.

The court has heard that it was discovered then that the smears were incorrectly analysed as being negative.

Judge Kevin Cross acknowledged that false negatives and positives were possible without negligence having occurred, but said if she applied today for further documents specifically relating to her own smear test, he would be inclined to support her.

Yesterday, Mrs Morrissey applied to see all communications with the HSE relevant to the release of the audit results to the women who had been diagnosed with cervical cancer as well as communications between the HSE and Quest Diagnostics about the quality assurance standards on the screening of the cervical smears of women participating in the national cervical screening programme, and Medlab’s standard operating procedures.