‘Cervical screening would save 60 lives a year’

IT would cost the State just €30 million to set up a national cervical screening programme - saving more than 60 women’s lives every year.

If the political will was there, such a programme could be in place by the middle of next year, according to Dr Marian O’Reilly, director of the Irish Cervical Screening Programme (ICSP).

Dr O’Reilly has estimated that the single biggest cost of rolling out the screening nationally, at up to e15m a year, would be the provision of free testing by GPs.