Savita consultant is cervical cancer expert

Dr Katherine Astbury, the consultant who treated Savita Halappanavar, is a highly qualified obstetrician and gynaecologist with particular expertise in cervical
cancer.

She qualified as a doctor in 1994 and spent two years in general surgery before training as a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist.

She has worked in all the main maternity hospitals in the State except Cork but has not worked abroad.

From south Dublin, Dr Astbury is widely published in research journals and has studied for a doctorate in addition to her medical degrees.

She has worked in many of the main hospitals in Dublin over the past 15 years, including St James's, the Coombe, the Rotunda and the National Maternity Hospital.

She took up a position as a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist in University College Hospital Galway in May 2011.

Dr Astbury’s name has not featured publicly in coverage of Ms Halappanavar’s death since the story broke last November.

However, she was listed along with other doctors who treated Ms Halappanavar as
a witness at this week's inquest.

She is a member of the Irish Cervical Screening Research Consortium, a collaboration between researchers at Irish universities, hospitals and biotechnology companies.

Among the research papers she has co-authored are studies into biomarkers in cervical cancer and the clinical associations of activated protein C resistance in pregnancy.

Other studies have been published on cervical neoplasia and gene-expression profiling in cervical cancer.