Women's lives cannot be jeopardised by further cutbacks to women's health services
14 Jul 2009
The National Women's Council of Ireland (NWCI) supports the Well Women Centre's (WWC) call to ensure that the most-at-risk groups are targeted in planning future delivery of the Cervical Check National Screening Service. The Dublin Well Women Centre is a member organisation of the NWCI.
As part of its Women's Health Campaign , the NWCI has been conducting a series of workshops with members across the country, focussing on women's access to public health services. Alhough the feedback about CervicalCheck at the workshops has been generally positive; at workshops in Cork, Donegal and Waterford, community health workers expressed concern that the Free Cervical Screening Programme would effectively be reduced by managing demand; once the scheme switches to an invitation-only system shortly.
The NWCI echoes the WWC concern that once CervicalCheck moves to a call/recall system in September, women from lower socio-economic groups may 'fall between the cracks' unless they are specifically targeted through recruitment and education campaigns.