Release Statistics On Labs At Centre Of Cervical Check

TD demands Health Minister release statistics on labs at centre of CervicalCheck crisis

“Audit must be reopened” says Bríd Smith TD

People Before Profit TD Bríd Smith has called on Health Minister Simon Harris to release statistics on the breakdown of the misread slides at the heart of the CervicalCheck crisis. The TD has asked repeatedly over the past 16 months for a detailed breakdown of the numbers of misread slides per laboratory concerned. This information has so far been refused by the HSE and Minister.

The TD said: “Two things need to follow immediately from the RCOG review; we need a breakdown of the number of these slides per Laboratory concerned, this will give us an indication if the source of the crisis is the decision to outsource the service to private labs.

“But the more immediate issue that follows from RCOG is the need of the Minister to restart the clinical audit that he stopped in May 2018. This pause in the auditing of women’s slides who develop cervical cancer means over 500 women are unable to have an independent review of their CervicalCheck history, and also means we are not following best practice in regards to the monitoring and quality assurance of the screening process.”

The TD highlighted one case of a young women who has had to pay thousands of euros to have her slides reviewed independently following a diagnosis of cervical cancer earlier this year. That review confirmed that four previous slides had been misread as negative.

The TD stated: “I believe this is just one case, since the Minister stopped the audit in May 2018 there may be many more. I can’t understand the continued refusal of the Minister and the HSE to restart the audit process as it is a central recommendation of Scally and now of the RCOG review.”