AIRLINK 189.36 Increased By ▲ 1.33 (0.71%)
BOP 11.10 Decreased By ▼ -0.76 (-6.41%)
CNERGY 7.28 Decreased By ▼ -0.26 (-3.45%)
FCCL 36.65 Decreased By ▼ -1.14 (-3.02%)
FFL 14.95 Decreased By ▼ -0.29 (-1.9%)
FLYNG 26.19 Increased By ▲ 0.66 (2.59%)
HUBC 130.89 Increased By ▲ 0.74 (0.57%)
HUMNL 13.47 Decreased By ▼ -0.14 (-1.03%)
KEL 4.28 Decreased By ▼ -0.07 (-1.61%)
KOSM 6.08 Decreased By ▼ -0.09 (-1.46%)
MLCF 45.94 Increased By ▲ 0.26 (0.57%)
OGDC 201.86 Decreased By ▼ -4.57 (-2.21%)
PACE 6.12 Decreased By ▼ -0.26 (-4.08%)
PAEL 38.36 Decreased By ▼ -1.95 (-4.84%)
PIAHCLA 16.73 Decreased By ▼ -0.22 (-1.3%)
PIBTL 7.94 Decreased By ▼ -0.09 (-1.12%)
POWER 9.86 Decreased By ▼ -0.17 (-1.69%)
PPL 173.46 Decreased By ▼ -5.38 (-3.01%)
PRL 34.73 Decreased By ▼ -1.63 (-4.48%)
PTC 23.95 Decreased By ▼ -0.44 (-1.8%)
SEARL 101.74 Decreased By ▼ -1.42 (-1.38%)
SILK 1.07 No Change ▼ 0.00 (0%)
SSGC 32.70 Decreased By ▼ -3.54 (-9.77%)
SYM 17.93 Decreased By ▼ -0.30 (-1.65%)
TELE 8.14 Decreased By ▼ -0.24 (-2.86%)
TPLP 12.02 Decreased By ▼ -0.14 (-1.15%)
TRG 67.40 Increased By ▲ 0.07 (0.1%)
WAVESAPP 11.80 Decreased By ▼ -0.21 (-1.75%)
WTL 1.52 Decreased By ▼ -0.05 (-3.18%)
YOUW 3.90 Increased By ▲ 0.01 (0.26%)
BR100 11,819 Decreased By -87.9 (-0.74%)
BR30 35,000 Decreased By -554.1 (-1.56%)
KSE100 112,085 Decreased By -478.8 (-0.43%)
KSE30 34,946 Decreased By -148 (-0.42%)

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar on Tuesday issued a formal state apology to women whose cervical cancer diagnoses were delayed by failures in a national screening programme.

"On behalf of the state, I apologise to the women and their loved ones who suffered from a litany of failures in how cervical screening in our country operated over many years," Varadkar said in parliament.

"We say sorry to those whose lives were shattered, we say sorry to those whose lives were destroyed and to those whose lives could have been different."

An audit of smears from around 1,500 cervical cancer patients diagnosed from 2008 to 2018 found previous screening tests from approximately 200 women could have provided earlier detection.

"The screening test could have provided a different result or a warning of increased risk or evidence of developing cancer," Ireland's Cervical Check programme said in a statement in May 2018.

The scandal came to light following the case of Vicky Phelan - a cancer patient whose 2014 diagnosis was delayed by an inaccurate smear reading in 2011.

Phelan brought a case against Ireland's Health Services Executive and a testing laboratory to the country's high court, winning a 2.5 million euro ($2.8 million) settlement against the lab.

She refused to sign a non-disclosure agreement and the systemic failures of the scheme came to national attention in April 2018.

A scoping inquiry published in September 2018 uncovered issues "redolent of a whole-system failure" and a number of women whose early smear tests were incorrectly read have since died following battles with cancer.

Offering apologies to "those who passed on and cannot be here" Varadkar called the programme "a system that was doomed to fail". "Today's apology is offered to all the people the state let down and to their families who paid the price for those failures as well," he said. "A broken service, broken promises, broken lives - a debacle that left a country heartbroken."

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2019

Comments

Comments are closed.