BreastCheck delays - No excuse for wait for cancer checks

IT is utterly disgraceful that thousands of women have to wait up to two years for a life-saving mammogram capable of detecting breast cancer 18 months before symptoms of the disease emerge.

In Cork alone, more than 4,000 women are on hospital waiting lists, some for over two years. Clearly, this delay is putting the lives of women with suspected breast cancer at risk.

From Donegal to Cork, countless women are in peril because of the Government’s perplexing failure to introduce the BreastCheck programme on a countrywide basis. Since it was introduced in 2000, the scheme has been confined to the eastern region.