No repeat of cancer scandal, Harney vows

The Minister for Health, Mary Harney, has given an undertaking that serious weaknesses identified in reports into breast cancer services in Portlaoise will not recur.

Ms Harney again apologised to the nine women who were misdiagnosed at the Midland Regional Hospital and who were later found to have cancer.

Ms Harney said she wanted to see what lessons could be learned and how those lessons could be put into effect.

She said she was confident the board of the HSE would put things right.

The head of the HSE, Professor Brendan Drumm, has expressed his regret to patients affected and has apologised for what happened.

The Opposition has criticised the HSE in the wake of the breast cancer reports.

Labour Party Health Spokesperson Jan O'Sullivan said the reports exposed a 'total shambles' in relation to management of the HSE.

Fine Gael's Health Spokesman Dr James Reilly said the reports highlighted that the HSE was dysfunctional.

Three critical reports

The main report into breast cancer misdiagnosis at the Midland Regional Hospital in Portlaoise has said that one of the nine patients whose cancer was missed was found to have an abnormality, suggestive of malignancy, two years and nine months earlier.

The report by consultant radiologist Dr Ann O' Doherty also found that surgery had been recommended for some patients who were healthy.

It said safety, quality and standard of the breast imaging service at the hospital resulted in a significant and avoidable delay in the diagnosis of cancer.

Dr O' Doherty said that the quality of mammograms was patchy, mainly for technical reasons, which made them hard to read. It blames this mainly on the processing system for images.

Ten months before the controversy erupted, medical staff complained to hospital management about problems with the equipment and warned of the danger of mistakes.

The Doherty and Fitzgerald reports dealt with two aspects of the affair - events leading up to the suspension of breast services and the HSE's management of the crisis.

The Fitzgerald report said there was a fundamental weakness in how the HSE managed this affair. It said this resulted in unnecessary anxiety for many women and should never have happened.

The Doherty report pointed to a fragmented cancer service across three sites in the Midlands and said there was no consultant radiologist in Portlaoise with a special interest in breast radiology.

Last night it emerged that consultant radiologist Dr Visa Moodley has been asked by the HSE to return to work.

Dr Moodley was put on leave last August after breast cancer services were suspended and nine women who had been given the all clear were later found to have breast cancer.

Late last year, Dr Moodley said she had always acted in the best interests of patients and claimed she was placed on leave for being overly cautious and requesting too many tests.

Download the full Fitzgerald report and Doherty report