The processing of CervicalCheck samples in Ireland has recommenced, more than a year after a cyber attack knocked out the only Irish lab working for the screening programme.
A small number of samples were processed at a €20 million dedicated new facility at the Coombe hospital in Dublin shortly before Christmas and throughput is to be ramped up over the next two months.
By the end of March, the new National Cervical Screening Laboratory plans to handle 10 per cent of samples provided by women to CervicalCheck, according to its director Dr Cillian de Gascun.
For the foreseeable future, the remainder of the annual average of about 300,000 slides will continue to be processed in US labs until staffing issues are resolved.
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The repatriation of cervical cancer screening to Ireland was one of the main promises by government in the aftermath of the 2018 CervicalCheck controversy, which revealed a major lack of oversight of US labs by the Irish screening programme.
Although the new laboratory was built on budget, it has been unable to assume responsibility for screening over the past year, due largely to IT and staffing issues.
Some staff have told The Irish Times they have been doing “nothing” over the past year while the delays continued.
Dr de Gascun, who was prominent during the Covid-19 pandemic as director of the National Virus Reference Laboratory and a member of Nphet, was drafted in to a part-time post as interim head of the lab last October.
“We’ve learned over the last year that we need a dedicated team for the cervical screening lab, because in the absence of those dedicated resources, as we saw in relation to the cyber attacks, staffing issues, IT and quality, we were quite thin on the ground.”
By March, the service will have 2½ whole-time equivalent consultants on its staff, but Dr de Gascun estimates six to eight consultants will be needed before the lab can take on the bulk of CervicalCheck samples. Large numbers of screeners will also have to be employed, but they take two years to train.
He acknowledged the delays of the past year have been “very difficult”, as controversy continued to swirl around CervicalCheck. Now, he says, the service is in a “good position” with a new consultant due to start shortly and new quality staff appointed last month.
CervicalCheck was engulfed in controversy in the aftermath of Vicky Phelan’s 2018 High Court settlement with the Health Service Executive, after which dozens of other women diagnosed with cervical cancer discovered earlier screenings could have been interpreted differently.
