Future of breast screening at risk over payouts

The growing threat of legal action and multimillion-euro payouts are putting the future of the national breast screening programme at risk, it has been claimed.

BreastCheck’s national clinical director, Ann O’Doherty, said her biggest fear was that the litigation was going to be so costly that politicians would stop funding screening and put the resources into symptomatic breast cancer services.

Prof O’Doherty said she has worked in breast screening for 30 years and would not have more than one medico-legal case a year.