Coombe lab resumes CervicalCheck work after six-month interruption

The processing of CervicalCheck samples in Ireland has resumed after six months when work was halted over laboratory accreditation issues.

The National Cervical Screening Laboratory at the Coombe women’s hospital in Dublin recommenced screening on Tuesday, Fiona Murphy, chief executive of the National Screening Service, confirmed.

The quality and safety of the lab service “was not in question” during the suspension of work at the lab, Ms Murphy stressed.

The Coombe facility, which is intended over time to assume responsibility for processing all CervicalCheck samples, began screening in November 2022 but was forced to stop within months due to accreditation difficulties.

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Having been granted accreditation initially by the Irish National Accreditation Board (INAB), it failed to meet a filing deadline for outstanding documents in March this year.

Its INAB accreditation was then suspended for HPV and cytology sample processing pending the completion of this process.

The State’s only cervical cancer screening lab is now several years behind targets for taking over screening of Irish samples from US labs.

Last year, public health expert Dr Gabriel Scally, who investigated the 2018 controversy over CervicalCheck, highlighted a range of issues he said needed to be resolved before screening could resume. These included the level of staffing and, in particularly, the lack of a person qualified to act as lead pathologist.

News of the recommencement of work at the lab was provided by Ms Murphy in answer to a parliamentary question from Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín.

“This is indeed welcome news,” Mr Toibín said. “We need to bring testing home to Ireland, and move away from the system of sending Irish slides to foreign laboratories. One of the recommendations of the Brian MacCraith Rapid Review Report into issues with CervicalCheck was the progression of this project in order to ‘remove Ireland’s current high risk dependence on a single outsourced supplier’. I am glad to see that testing is to resume in Ireland today – some 4½ years after this recommendation.”

Most CervicalCheck samples will continue to be processed by Quest Diagnostics in the US for the foreseeable future.