Hundreds of thousands of women face an “agonising wait” of up to six
months to be checked for breast cancer
writes
Chris Smyth in the Times of London,
after an IT blunder which meant
they were not called for screening led to the deaths of as many as 270
patients.
NHS bosses were trying last night to contact 309,000 women who were
not invited to breast cancer checks because of computer failures dating
back almost a decade.
Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary,
apologised for women’s lives being cut short by “administrative
incompetence”, but said that some women affected would have to wait
until the end of October for catch-up checks to avoid disrupting routine
screening for those aged between 50 and 70.
Campaigners demanded that the NHS hire hundreds of extra staff or send
women abroad to get the checks done. Labour said that the NHS should be
given extra resources to carry out the checks, but the party’s response
was tempered by the knowledge that it had been in power when the
troubles began.
Public
Health England, which runs the screening programme, is also facing
questions. Mr Hunt told the Commons: “For many years oversight of [the]
programme has not been good enough.”
… Mr Hunt promised to write by the end of the month to all women
affected, saying: “There may be some who receive a letter having had a
recent terminal diagnosis. For them and others it is incredibly
upsetting to know that you did not receive an invitation for screening
at the correct time and totally devastating to hear you may have lost or
be about to lose a loved one because of administrative incompetence.”
The
NHS is promising to pay for staff overtime and to use the private
sector to offer all women who missed out an appointment by the end of
October.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin, chief executive of the charity Breast
Cancer Now, said it was “beyond belief” that the problem was undetected
for so long.
“Beyond belief” is another way of saying Unexpected.
No comments:
Post a Comment