BreastCheck scheme - Delay in screening costing lives

Since breast screening has been proven to cut cancer deaths by 20%, it is an outrage that BreastCheck has not yet been introduced in the South and West.

It is now more than five years after it was introduced to screen women in the rest of the country.

Plans to expand the facilities to the South and West were announced in July 2002, but it has taken since then for the Department of Health to announce that design contracts are to be put out to tender for buildings to be constructed at South Infirmary/Victoria Hospital, Cork, and at University Hospital in Galway.