Southern trust cervical screening review: 'We're in limbo'

By Tara Griffiths

A group of women who are part of the cervical screening review in the southern trust say not knowing the status of their cases is causing emotional distress.

Last October around 17,000 women received correspondence from the southern health trust informing them that they are part of a review of its cervical screening programme, dating back as far as 2008.

This week we heard some of their stories at a meeting in Portadown.

Diane Mallon is one of the 'ladies with letters' and says it has caused her a lot of stress:

"I feel like I'm in limbo.

"I have absolutely no understanding of where I am in the review, I've only had one letter and it's always there in the back of my mind I'm worrying about it constantly."

The cervical screening programme looks for changes in cells which, without treatment, could develop into cancer.

The review centres around concerns about performance in some steps of the Trust’s lab’s screening system and as a precaution, the Trust undertook this review.

Some cervical smears are being reviewed and some women are being recalled for a repeat smear.

To date around 1900 slides have been reviewed and no high grade abnormalities have been found.

The Trust says it is working through cases as quickly as possible and a freephone information line has been set up.

But the ladies with letters say they’re concerned some still haven’t received an update on their individual cases.

Olivia McAlinden told us how she felt when she received the letter:

"Emotionally, it got to me a lot.

"I was thinking to myself am I a walking time bomb? What's going to happen?

"I was nearly going into depression because it was just too much to take in all at one because it was unexpected."

The Trust has moved to allay some of the ladies' fears and has engaged with the women.

Dr Clare McGalie is a Consultant Pathologist in the southern trust and Clinical Director for Laboratories.

She said the scale of the review is presenting challenges:

"The risk to any individual lady is extremely small, the challenge is the number, we've cast the net far and wide.

"We're working as hard as we can and we have other pressures within the pathology system and we have workforce issues.

"We also have the HPV negative backlog.

"We're trying our best, we've met several times this week regionally and with the Department of Health to see if we can really pin down timelines."

The Trust says it hopes to have the review completed by the end of June.