Emails to screening service get two-line response
WOMEN who email CervicalCheck with questions about their smear test receive a terse, two-line response and a link to the screening service’s website.
The response says: “Thank you for your enquiry. We will be happy to respond to you as soon as possible.”
The brief reply comes as CervicalCheck continues to struggle to return calls to women who rang its helpline.
Yesterday evening, 4,501 women were still waiting for a callback.
The figures show the helpline, which has received 11,982 calls since it was set up last Saturday week in response to women’s concerns about test results, saw another spike in callers yesterday.
The helpline got 432 calls yesterday after the demand appeared to die down late last week.
The HSE said that the call team remain extremely busy and “our priority is women with specific clinical queries or a history of cervical cancer”.
The callbacks where a woman had cancer or investigation treatment following a test take time and are delivered by clinical staff with expertise, the HSE insisted.
Meanwhile, eight women or next of kin of women who died have still to be contacted by CervicalCheck following revelations that internal reports had not been passed on to most of them.
As of yesterday, 201 of the 209 women or their families in cases where the patient had died had been contacted.
CervicalCheck did an internal review of all these women who developed cervical cancer.
The reviews confirmed they had an incorrect test result which delayed treatment.
However, until last week only 162 had been told of the reports.
CervicalCheck said it is also working with the National Cancer Registry and the Department of Health to secure details of around 1,500 women who were diagnosed with cancer in the last decade whose cases were not looked at by the screening service.
Doctors and clinics are seeing a significant demand among women for free re-tests.
Several are setting up special clinics to do a volume of women who want peace of mind in the next week or two.