Smear services report big upsurge in women seeking tests

Services providing cervical smear tests are experiencing a big upsurge in the numbers of women seeking new smear tests, amid ongoing fears about the reliability of the CervicalCheck screening programme.

The Well Woman Centre (WWC), the Irish Family Planning Association (IFPA) and general practitioners say they have been "inundated with calls" from women since Monday.

Alison Begas, chief executive of the WWC, said there had been "a huge increase" in the number of women booking smear tests in the past few days.

“Women are booking CervicalCheck smears where they might have received their letter [telling them they are due for a test] in the last month or few weeks and had been putting booking it on the ‘long finger’. We’ve also seen an increase in the numbers of women requesting to book a private smear.”

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The WWC, which has three clinics in Dublin, offers private smear tests outside the national screening programme, for €85. It sends all its approximately 7,000 tests a year to the Coombe Women and Infants Hospital in Dublin for examination.

Ms Begas said smear test appointments were “booked out for almost the next two weeks” where normally an appointment was available within three days.

The IFPA too said it had noticed a “big upsurge since Monday” from women seeking smear tests, with some prepared to travel from “quite far away” to one of its three clinics in Dublin.

“There has been a large volume of calls coming into our clinics since Monday. We’re putting on extra smear clinics to cope with the demand. In the last three weeks of April, the clinics were taking about 50 smears a week. We have more than double that booked in for this week – 106 – and even more for the second week of May – 131. Most women are opting for CervicalCheck but some are paying privately.

“We’re seeing women who haven’t had a cervical screening in a while or may have missed one, but we’re also seeing women who have had smears quite recently. So certainly women are worried.”

The IFPA also sends all its smears to the Coombe for examination.

In a statement, the Irish College of General Practitioners said: “GPs are in the front line and are already inundated with concerns from our patients.”

Laboratories

Smear tests carried out for CervicalCheck are processed in three laboratories, under contract. They are Quest Diagnostics in New Jersey in the United States; MedLab Pathology in Dublin; and the Coombe hospital, a spokeswomen for the HSE said.

“All these laboratories contracted by CervicalCheck have ISO accreditation certified by the relevant authorities.”

She said the CervicalCheck helpline had received more than 6,000 calls since Monday, many from people with normal test results.

When a woman calls the helpline her medical history cannot be accessed by the person to whom they are speaking. They can request a call-back from a medical professional who will have access to their medical history.

“Every effort is being made to ensure these calls are returned in coming days and additional staff are now in place to help deal with the high volume of calls,” said the spokeswoman.