WOMEN WHO have to wait up to 18 months for a cancer check in Donegal hospitals have signed up for a round trip of almost 470km (292 miles) for the sake of their health.
Forty-four women have booked on to a bus leaving Glencolmcille on Monday week for breast check screening at a clinic in Belfast’s Marlborough Street.
Trip organiser Caroline Brogan said: “It’s unbelievable. I advertised the bus run last week and within a day and a half it was booked out.”
It’s her second bus run to Belfast for mammograms – the first was in March – and already a third bus which she hopes will be able to travel by December has been booked out.
Ms Brogan, wife of Independent Donegal county councillor Thomas Pringle, said: “Unless you go private the only women entitled to mammograms on the health service in the Republic are over-55s. In this part of the country the waiting list is between nine and 18 months.
“In the North the tests are available once a woman reaches 40.” The wait time for the Belfast clinic can be up to six months but Ms Brogan says it may sometimes be considerably less. That’s why she’s hoping her third bus will be able to depart even before December.
“I got the idea for a special bus from the number of women I met when they came in to Thomas’s office for help. There were so many that I felt I just had to do something for them.
“After the first bus run five women got results that required follow-up treatment. It just goes to show that the checks are vital and women are more and more aware of that nowadays.”
The bus – “some of the girls call it the booby-bus”, Ms Brogan said – will leave Glencolmcille at 5am and pick up passengers at stops en route to Donegal town after which it will head to Belfast. It will be up to 15 hours later before most of them are back in their homes.