Question
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to his Oral Statement of 2 May 2018, Breast Cancer Screening, what the timetable is for his Department to contact in writing, the 309,000 women affected by the failure of the breast cancer screening programme.
Answer
Public Health England will contact all the women affected living within the United Kingdom who are registered with a general practitioner before the end of May with the first 65,000 letters going out last week. All reasonable efforts will be made to find the remainder who have moved from England. Any woman who thinks she may be affected has access to a helpline through which they can get access to clinical advice to help them decide whether or not a screening is appropriate for their particular situation.
Data on the number of women affected will be published by the end of May.
There has been no modelling done on the number of women estimated to have undetected breast cancer after being affected by the failure of the breast cancer screening programme. By offering all women who were not offered their last screening the opportunity to have their final screen it provides the opportunity to detect previously unidentified cancers.