Without an overhaul of CervicalCheck, attendance numbers will fall and more lives will be lost

IT HAS taken just a few days for CervicalCheck, the national screening programme, to become embroiled in a crisis of confidence after a decade of enjoying mostly good publicity.

The revelations in the past few days have been stark, led by the quiet dignity of Vicky Phelan, who has terminal cervical cancer after abnormalities in a screening test in 2011 were missed.

The failure to tell her about an internal CervicalCheck report on her case for three years, and the disclosure that 206 women have developed cancer after being given the all-clear have swiftly combined to damage the screening service’s image.

But there is little doubt that the storm has been heightened by the evasive and vague response from CervicalCheck.

Senior doctors from CervicalCheck who have been on the airwaves have relied too much on resorting to phrases like “international best practice” or “process” to defend action such as leaving it to the judgment of oncologists as to whether they told their female patients about the findings of a report into how their smear test was misread.

Journalists have found basic information difficult to secure.

How many more women have wrongly been given the all-clear?

Has every woman been alerted to an internal review of their case?

What is the failure rate in CervicalCheck?

This information was not readily available and some of the questions remain unanswered.

The move to tell women who have developed cancer after a test that their case