Over 3,500 more women affected by cervical screening error

Following on from the article titled ‘Over 40,000 women did not receive cervical cancer screening letters’ it has been reported that 3,591 more woman have been affected by the cervical cancer screening error than first thought. The error saw over 40,000 women not receive crucial information regarding their screening.

It was only when Capita – the company used by the NHS to send out screening invites – were investigating the initial error that they discovered a further three and a half thousand woman had been affected.

The majority of woman did not receive either an invitation or a reminder about cervical cancer screening, whilst around 200 woman were not informed about abnormal test results.

Since the discovery of Capita’s error, the 200 or so woman have all had follow up investigations and it has been reported that no harm has been done as a result of the correspondence failure.

Amanda Cavanagh, a Medical Negligence Specialist at Ashtons Legal, says: “It is astounding that once they were aware of the error, Capita and NHS England failed to identify all the women affected. It’s alarming that NHS England appear to believe that there is no evidence of any harm coming to these women….surely this cannot be determined until such time as each and every single one of those women have been recalled and tested, and the results are clear before making such a sweeping statement! Again I urge any ladies who fall into the bracket for smear testing to check they are not overdue.”