Sir, – I await with interest Minister for Health Simon Harris’s appointment of the new clinical director for the cervical screening programme. I have no doubt that his lack of confidence in the management of the programme and his need to request those in management to consider their positions was underpinned by the knowledge that there is a replacement available. This replacement will have an exhaustive knowledge and “root-and-branch” insight into the 200,000 smears taken every year, the 4,500 GPs, doctors and nurses directly involved with the functioning of the cervical check programme and the 15 colposcopy units around the country who deal with the 8,000 women referred to them on an annual basis. They will also be accountable for the 50,000 high-grade cases referred over the past 10 years to the clinics from the primary care setting, the 30,000 low-grade cases referred and the 1,400 cancers detected over the first decade of the programme. They will also couple this workload with an exhaustive knowledge of how smear tests work, how pathology samples are interpreted and that there will be no room allowable for any human error.
They will need to continue the drive to encourage our parents to allow their daughters to receive the lifesaving HPV vaccine and will need to commandeer the programme in the direction of moving away from traditional smears to HPV testing, which will reduce error rates further.
They will be happy to do this on a shoestring budget. They will also be happy in the knowledge that when they accept that errors have been made, that systems have been put in place to minimise these errors and that when they openly welcome an independent international review of their programme, which has met all internationally accepted standards thus far, that their accountability, requested by the Minister, actually means their resignation. – Yours, etc,
Dr MYRA FITZPATRICK,
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Terenure,
Dublin 6W.
Sir, – Successive ministers for health have apologised to more women than there are antiphons in the litany of the saints. This would indicate that it is either time to appoint a minister for apologies or invoke a dramatic reform programme for the health service and its processes. – Yours, etc,
CORMAC MEEHAN,
Bundoran,
Co Donegal.