The Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín TD has called for an urgent ‘random sample’ review of all cervical check slides over the past fifteen years. He was speaking after the HSE apologised to terminally-ill, mother of two, Leona Macken, in the High Court yesterday following a misreading of her 2020 and 2016 smear tests by Quest Diagnostics.
Speaking today Deputy Tóibín said: “In October 2020 I stood up in the Dáil and raised very serious concerns regarding Cervical Check – specifically around how all the reviews and audits conducted in light of the scandal focused on the slides of women who had been “diagnosed” since their smear tests. All the reviews and investigations which were conducted sought to identify how many ill women had been wronged, and neglected to look at the slides of supposedly healthy women. Leona Macken, who received an apology yesterday, was not part of the review. This is because at the time of the review she did not know she was ill. During those reviews, her slide from 2016 was skipped, it remained on the shelf and was not re-examined, because she did not know, nor did Cervical Check know, that she was ill”.
Deputy Tóibín continued: “I called for a review of all slides, including those of “healthy” women, in the Dáil on 21st October 2020 to determine if there were misreadings, I cautioned that “this matter is very important and I ask the Minister that he attends to it immediately”. The fact that subsequent to that debate, Ms Macken’s slides were not re-examined, until the point at which she was diagnosed, shows that no action was taken by the Minister. The Dáil exchange may be viewed here: Saincheisteanna Tráthúla – Topical Issue Debate – Dáil Éireann (33rd Dáil) – Wednesday, 21 Oct 2020 – Houses of the Oireachtas If Ms Macken’s slide had been re-examined in October 2020, as I called for it to be, then she would not have had to wait until 2023 for a diagnosis and treatment – it is a heartbreaking thing to have to say – but perhaps the outcome for her would have been different”.
“I commend Ms Macken on her courage in fighting for justice for herself and her family and for challenging Cervical Check’s narrative. Clear expert medical evidence was given as part of her case that the smear tests from 2016 and 2020 contained pre-cancerous abnormalities and that the tests should not have been reported as negative. There exists a major oversight in the government’s terms of reference for the various reviews, because of its bizarre focus on women who already know they are ill. Because of this flaw in the terms of reference, even in the heat of this scandal in 2018, nobody ever re-examined Ms Macken’s slide, which predated the scandal. The 2016 slide was never examined by any review team – when are they going to examine a random sample of all the slides on the shelves, to determine which women (currently believing themselves to be healthy) have had abnormalities missed – which women can yet be saved?”, concluded Tóibín.
