Cervical screening pause
Deputy Fitzpatrick raises concerns about the pause in cervical screening testing and the loss of trust after CervicalCheck. He questions why HPV testing is continuing without broader cell testing; the Chair intervenes on time, and Minister Donohoe says confidence in screening must be restored but he is not aware of the specific operational issue.
Previous governments promised to rectify the errors that resulted in the CervicalCheck scandal of 2018 involving several women, including Vicky Phelan, Eileen Rushe and Lynsey Bennett, receiving incorrect smear test results for cervical cancer. For reasons that must be obvious, many women in Ireland have lost confidence in the outsourcing of lab tests to the United States. Yet cervical screening, human papilloma virus, HPV, and cytology-sample processing at the State’s only lab, the recently opened national laboratory at the Coombe university hospital in Dublin, has been paused due to accreditation suspensions and outsourced to the US.
Not only has the screening been outsourced again, but the screening service has also been downgraded. If abnormal cells were detected through smear testing ten years ago, a colposcopy biopsy would have been carried out and the affected cells would have been removed to prevent them from turning cancerous. Aftercare then included yearly smear tests for the patient for ten consecutive years. We all know that finding abnormal cells early is the best preventative of cancer.
Comment on this
We all know that not everyone who develops cervical cancer will have HPV found at screening.
Comment on this
Why then are we not testing for abnormal cells while we are testing for HPV? Is this a money-saving initiative?
Comment on this
I thank the Deputy for raising what we all know is such an important matter. In the aftermath of the loss of life and health he referred to, the Government and the Department of Health took many steps to try to improve the level of confidence patients will have in the cancer screening procedures. This is because we know that a successful cancer screening health programme is so important in the prevention of the loss of life. I am not, I am afraid, aware of the specific issue the Deputy referred to in respect of the testing programme. Given the seriousness of the matter, I am not going to develop an answer for the Deputy based on information I do not have. What I will do, therefore, is follow up on this matter with the Department of Health and the Minister and ensure the Deputy gets a full answer in this regard. I do confirm, however, the general point that the Government is fully committed to taking all the steps needed to maintain the confidence that women have in what is a vital health programme.