Q&A: What happens next?

Q: There are more worrying revelations to emerge about the numbers of women with cervical cancer. It now seems the figure of 1,482 notified to CervicalCheck over the last decade was an underestimate?

A: Yes, it seems so. The Health Minister, Simon Harris, said more than 1,500 additional women were diagnosed with the disease since 2008 whose cases were not recorded by CervicalCheck. It brings the total number to 3,000.

Q: CervicalCheck is a screening service. Which agency notifies them of cases of cervical cancer?

A: The National Cancer Registry passes on the information to CervicalCheck. The screening service then examines if the woman has used its screening and had a smear test. The next step is to reinvestigate the result of that test to see if abnormalities or cancer was missed.

Q: Have all of these 1,500 women been diagnosed and are they in treatment?

A: Yes. None of them are unaware that they have the disease.

Q: So what are the outstanding questions? A: We don’t know if they had a test with CervicalCheck which was misread.

Q We were told earlier this week that reviews were carried out on 208 women who were wrongly given the all-clear and went on to develop cancer – 162 were not informed of the review and 17 women were dead. What is the update on their cases?

A: CervicalCheck was due to arrange for all the women to be notified this week of the review. In the case of women who died, their next of kin were to be contacted. As of yesterday the HSE was unable to give an update on how many contacts had been made except saying that it was under way.

Q: So there is a possibility, based on the fact that extra cases of cervical cancer have emerged, that more women could end up in this category.

In other words, that their smear test was misdiagnosed and their treatment was delayed?

A: Yes. That is a possibility.

Q: I hope we don’t have to endure a delay of months or years before we get answers to all of this. There is a Hiqa review of CervicalCheck planned and also an external review. There is huge concern about the quality of service at CervicalCheck but are we any clearer on when the retesting will be available for women who want to be re-screened?

A: GPs and clinics are expecting clearer guidelines on this today.