Ahern denies deliberate cover-up of cancer scare

TAOISEACH Bertie Ahern has denied there was a deliberate move to suppress the scale of a cancer misdiagnosis scare involving a Finnish pathologist despite top officials agreeing to withhold details from the public.

The Irish Examiner revealed on Saturday that the Department of Health and Health Service Executive (HSE) jointly agreed not to release the number of cancer patients feared to have been misdiagnosed by Dr Antoine Geagea at Cork University Hospital (CUH) last year and that the Government was made aware of the plan.

The strategy was adopted so as not to “cause widespread alarm in the public and unnecessary confusion in the media”. However, a review into the work of Dr Geagea, who has since resigned, is still under way and it remains unclear how many patient files he worked on in CUH and his previous posting in Galway.