Cervical cancer report points finger at Ministry of Health

The report released this morning from the Gisborne cervical inquiry has pointed the finger at the Ministry of Health for running a deficient national screening programme that allowed Dr Michael Bottrill to misread thousands of smears.

The report, written by a three-women panel after a 12-week inquiry last year, criticises the ministry for failing to carry out a national evaluation of its cervical screening programme.

The report says if the ministry had carried out such an evaluation, it would have been discovered that there was severe under-reporting in Gisborne.

"That knowledge should have lead to women receiving treatment earlier on and it may have avoided cancer mortality or severely invasive treatment of cancer," the report says.