Pleas for national cancer-screening programmes

The urgent roll-out of national screening programmes was called for today after a study revealed the cancer death rate among Irish women is higher than in most other European countries.

Action was urged after it emerged survival rates for women for several types of cancers were relatively poor by international standards.

Dr Liam Twomey, Fine Gael’s health spokesman, said the Government was costing women’s lives by stalling over the national roll-out of BreastCheck and the National Cervical Screening Programme.

“It is absolutely shameful that, with the number of women diagnosed with cancer having increased by 25% since 1994, comprehensive national screening programmes are still not available to facilitate prevention and early detection,” he said.

“The Government is failing the women of Ireland by not recognising the urgency of rolling out these screening programmes. More women will die prematurely as a result of this failure.”

The study ‘Women and Cancer 1994-2001’ from the Women’s Health Council and the National Cancer Registry found cancer is the second most common cause of death for women in Ireland.

The report showed the death rate from cancer among women in Ireland is higher than for other western European countries, apart from Denmark.

Dr Harry Comber, director of the National Cancer Registry, said the number of women diagnosed with cancer has risen steadily over the past decade.

In 1994, 5,848 cases of malignant cancer were diagnosed in women in Ireland with 7,400 cases expected to be identified this year.

The report recommends the roll-out of breast and cervical cancer screening programmes throughout the whole country.

Geraldine Luddy, director of the Women’s Health Council, said cancer incidence was often related to social circumstances.

“What is more, likelihood of treatment for cancer and survival have also been found to be related to socio-economic status,” she said.

Dr Twomey said it was now six-years since the first phase of the breast cancer screening programme commenced in the Eastern Region of the country.

“It is five years since the publication of the National Cancer Strategy, which promised that breast and cervical cancer screening would be extended nationwide.

"In the intervening period we have had a litany of announcements that have come to nothing and women here will have to continue to wait until 2007 or 2008 according to the latest announcement,” he said.

The Wexford TD highlighted the drop of one fifth in deaths from cancer in Northern Ireland where a breast cancer screening service will have been in place for 15 years by 2008.

“By that time, in the Republic of Ireland, hundreds of women will have lost their battle with breast cancer and hundreds more will have endured devastating, radical surgery,” he said.

“The late diagnosis of cancer will require more severe chemotherapy and women will suffer the side effects of radiotherapy to bring advanced cancer under control.

"Many women will have had their uterus removed because cancer had spread before treatment, denying some women the chance to have children and, in terminal cases, some children will be denied the chance to have a mother.”

Dr Twomey said the cost to the quality of life of all the women affected was impossible to measure.