Tag: cervical cancer

I questioned HSE officials on issues surrounding the Cervical Check fiasco. This recording is of my questions and their answers. So much time, so much pain, and still – so little real information. The HSE has so many managers, on big money, and so few nurses and doctors, not on big money. What on earth are the managers for? How does the Dept of Health stand over this? Is this ‘the market’ that our government is so fond of, delivering the services we need?

I  made several queries at the Dail committee today. Apart from the mess they have made of re-testing, there remain unanswered questions.

Since this time last year, I have been asking what labs gave the wrong results that led to 221 women having their cervical cancer go unnoticed. I believe that labs in the US are the ones involved. They were the cheaper option, a ‘for-profit’ company that failed women like Vikki Phealan. Outsourcing is the root of it. So I’m relieved to know the government intends, eventually, to re-patriate the service. Meantime, I’m still waiting the for the answer. 

Bríd addressed various issues on this popular radio programme; this is a recording of her comments on Brexhi and the border, the new children’s hospital overspend, the forthcoming nurses strike, and outsourcing women’s health care

SIMPLE QUESTION: WHAT LABS FAILED US? My 5th time to ask this in the Dáil – still no answer. Its important because 221 women, some of whom are dead, some dying, need not have developed #CervicalCancer. Outsourcing women’s health care to the cheapest bidder in the ‘marketplace’ was a POLITICAL DECSION and it has to stop. Yes, bad management and incompetent governance practices made a bad situation worse, but bottom line is the political choices made by successive governments who refuse to ANSWER FOR THEIR ROLE in the catastophe that is the cervical screening scandal. And now 6000 women need to be retested because of more imcompetent HSE/Dept of Health management decisions. What are they like??

 

Media Release- Bríd Smith TD, People Before Profit    12/11/2018

Request follows PAC committee hearing that reveals HSE reviewed the cases of the 221 women at the centre of crisis

“This information should be public and is the least the family of Julie O’Reilly and other women deserve,” says TD

People Before Profit TD Bríd Smith has formally complained to the Dáil’s Ceann Comhairle over the repeated refusal of the HSE and the Health Minister to answer a question on the cervical check scandal.

The TD has claimed that since May she has repeatedly asked the HSE to list the laboratories from which the 221 negligently misread slides came from. The question has never been answered despite assurances from ex HSE boss Tony O’Brien that it would be.Read more »

The cause of the #cervicalcheck tragedy has still not been addressed or acknowledged. We need to end the outsourcing and privatisation of our health as it puts profits before best practice and peoples needs. This short video explains and asks why after months of asking a simple question we still cant get a answer – What labs do the 221 false negatives come from?

OUTSOURCING KILLS! Last night on TV3, I explained that the Scally report showed the US labs that did Irish smear tests were not accredited by international standards. Minister Harris told me, via Parliamentary Questions (PQs) in May, that they were! And subsidiaries of these labs are getting the contract again – even after their shoddy work produced results that ultimately, saw women die unecessarily.

We also saw the agony of little Sophia, with scoliosis, who is waiting for treatment for 18months.Last year Minister Harris promised no child in this condition would wait more than 4 months. But HEY! The econonomy is booming – we’re told. Happy Days – we’re told! Not for little Sophia and children like her. We have THE WORST WAITING LISTS IN EUROPE for health services – over 700,0000 people on lists. Is this a measure of our ‘success’ Minister?