Woman faces 18-month wait for vital cancer test

A woman whose grandmother and aunt died of ovarian cancer as a result of the faulty BRCA1 gene faces an 18-month wait for a test to determine if she has inherited the gene.

She is one of 56 patients in Cork where the waiting time is a year-and-a-half to be seen at the monthly Cork cancer genetic clinic.

The woman, who wrote to her local politician, Sinn Féin councillor Henry Cremin, asking him to highlight her case, said her family has only recently found out that her grandmother and aunt, who died at ages 60 and 35, had the faulty gene.