Breast cancer screens for south and west

LONG-AWAITED breast screening facilities for the west and south of the country took another step forward yesterday with an advertisement for mammography equipment for Cork and Galway.

BreastCheck, the National Breast Screening Programme, has given suitable contractors until January 2007 to submit expressions of interest for the breast screening and assessment equipment and said it is very much on target to have the service up and running in the west and south by September 2007.

That will be more than seven years after free breast screening for women aged 50-64 was first rolled out in the east of the country.

A spokeswoman for BreastCheck said it was their intention to roll out seven mobile breast-screening units in the west and south in tandem with the two static facilities.

Construction work began on its new unit at the South Infirmary Victoria Hospital in Cork at the start of this month.

BreastCheck believes it will take 48 weeks to complete building work.

The unit will cover the surrounding counties of Cork, Kerry, Limerick, Waterford and Tipperary, with an estimated 35,500 women to be invited for screening each year.

Screening can detect cancer up to 18 months before it appears as a lump.

According to BreastCheck’s 2005/2006 Annual Report, published at the start of this month, 1,867 women were diagnosed with the disease between February 2000 and August 2006. Last year, 318 cases were detected.

Last week Health Minister Mary Harney announced the BreastCheck programme was to get an additional €8 million for the national roll-out of the screening initiative as part of the estimates for next year.

The minister said she hoped every woman who qualified for a breast cancer check would be able to access one in 18-24 months.