CervicalCheck cover-up adds to litany of health scandals

FACE OF BRAVERY Vicky Phelan, the latest health-scandal victim to take on the might of the State.

IF only the sense of déjà vu invoked by the CervicalCheck controversy was simply poignant because of its similarities to the late Bridget McCole’s tragic tale. Unfortunately, the story told so eloquently by Vicky Phelan some ten days ago is much more than another deplorable personal story.
It is another health scandal to add to the litany of health scandals only uncovered after brave individuals – mainly women – come forward, stand their ground, and engage in David-and-Goliath struggles with those in powerful places in the State. A state that is meant to cherish all its citizens equally, we might add.
It is yet another example of a culture of cover-ups within the corridors of power. A bureaucratic mindset underpinned by spin, litigiousness and protectionism.
It is a chasmic failure by those we entrust to run our health services efficiently and transparently.
Once again, ordinary citizens are left reeling. Doesn’t the dubbing back in the late 1990s of the Department of Health by the then minister, Brian Cowen, as ‘Angola’ – because it had so many landmines – still seem apt?
Like Vicky Phelan, Bridget McCole took on the might of the State and its agencies and will be forever remembered for her resolve, tenacity and fearlessness as she approached her death in October 1996. A Donegal mother of 12, she died during a High Court battle with the Blood Transfusion Service Board (BTSB) following her refusal to accept an offer of compensation because – along with 1,600 other women – she had been injected with infected Anti-D, a blood product, in 1976.
Just two weeks before her death from Hepatitis-C, the BTSB admitted liability and negligence and apologised for infecting her but threatened that if she was to proceed with a case for damages, and not succeed, they would pursue her for costs.
Almost 22 years later, 43-year-old mother-of-two Vicky Phelan, who has terminal cancer, was vindicated after a long legal battle with Clinical Pathology Laboratories (CPL), the US company contracted to provide laboratory services by CervicalCheck, the National Screening Programme. It made a €2.5 million settlement with her, without admission of liability. Ms Phelan received three consecutive false negative results in 2011, 2013 and 2014.
Ironically, this smear-test service was established ten years ago as ‘a quality-assured, organised and population-based screening programme’ to be provided free for women aged from 25 to 60.
CLP was one of three laboratories (the other two were Irish) to win the contract in 2010. The following year Limerick resident, Vicky Phelan attended a routine CervicalCheck and was wrongly given the all-clear. Three years later a health service audit showed that Ms Phelan’s test result was wrong, but she was not told about this.
Separately, Ms Phelan was diagnosed with cervical cancer and underwent aggressive treatments, ultimately getting the all-clear. Three years later, in 2017, after her cancer returned, while sitting in a hospital waiting room with her mother, Vicky Phelan read her medical file and inadvertently discovered the truth. It was this chance reading that opened the floodgates of this ongoing controversy.
Now, the HSE’s Serious Incident Management Team (SIMT) has confirmed that of 1,462 women diagnosed with cervical cancer since 2008, 209 had received false negative results and these false-negatives had not been disclosed to 162 of them.
As the usual wrangling and posturing continues about inquiries and redress schemes, Mayo TD Lisa Chambers has been an excellent advocate for an expeditious approach to addressing the issues now in the public domain because of Vicky Phelan’s tenacity and integrity.
Ms Chambers has argued that the Government must move swiftly to allay the fears of these women and has called on the Minister for Health Simon Harris to ensure that ‘the independent inquiry announced by the Government is established without delay and that a report on the controversy is published as soon as possible’.
She has argued that the drip-feeding of information by CervicalCheck, the HSE and Minister for Health, Simon Harris ‘has heightened anxiety, especially when [women] read about or listen to the ordeal which Vicky Phelan was put through in order to get information about her own case’.
Seventeen deaths of women who were misdiagnosed are 17 deaths too many. This must never happen again to mnΡ na hÉireann. The late Bridget McCole’s legacy deserves more. Much more.