This article is from page 10 of the 2006-07-18 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 10 JPG
CLARE women seeking mammograms will have to travel to Dublin for the foreseeable future, because offers to conduct the procedure at the Galway Clinic and Barrington’s Hospital in Limerick were turned down by BreastCheck Ireland last week.
Dr James Sheehan, founder of the Blackrock and Galway Clinics, has been attempting to instigate the screening procedure at the Galway hospital for the last two years. But his repeated attempts have been rejected by BreastCheck Ireland and the Department of Health.
This is believed to be the final attempt that the Galway Clinic will make to instigate the procedure before the planned roll-out of the facility by BreastCheck next year.
“We confirm that a number of different offers were proposed by the Galway Clinic. One of them includes the provision of breast screening facilities,” said a spokesperson from BreastCheck Ireland.
“The National Breast Screening Board considered the terms of the offer and concluded that it did not satisfy its quality assurance criteria. On this basis it will not proceed. We have no further comment to make on this matter.”
Plans were announced last year for two new BreastCheck facilities to be located at the Victoria University Hospital in Cork and University College Hospital in Galway (UCHG).
It is planned that the Galway facility will have two mobile screening units enabling it to offer tests to the estimated 60,000 women at risk in Clare, Sligo, Roscommon, Donegal, Mayo, Leitrim and parts of Tipperary.
It is projected that these new mammogram services would end the waiting list for screening in the west. However, they are not projected to be up and running until 2007 at the earliest. At present, Clare women have to wait for an average of nine months in order to obtain the mammogram service, with some women reported to be waiting in excess of two years. The service is readily available in Dublin and its surroundings. Mr Sheehan had proposed that the Galway Clinic would “fill the gap” until such a time as the service was up and running in the west.
The situation for the thousands of Clare women at risk from breast cancer was compounded last week with the announcement that Barrington’s Hospital in Limerick was also turned down by BreastCheck Ireland.