{"id":111998,"date":"2025-10-09T21:19:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-09T21:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/111998\/"},"modified":"2025-10-09T21:19:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T21:19:08","slug":"spanish-healthcare-chief-resigns-over-breast-cancer-screening-scandal-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/111998\/","title":{"rendered":"Spanish healthcare chief resigns over breast cancer screening scandal \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The head of healthcare in the Spanish region of Andaluc\u00eda <\/a>has resigned and the local government has been forced to present an emergency plan after it emerged that hundreds of women with suspect mammography results had not been diagnosed or contacted for further testing. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe situation is serious and I have taken drastic decisions,\u201d said Juanma Moreno, the conservative president of the southern region, on Thursday. The previous day, he had accepted the resignation of healthcare head Roc\u00edo Hern\u00e1ndez and acknowledged that her department had mismanaged the crisis.<\/p>\n

About 2,000 women are believed to have undergone screening but were not contacted for further testing despite showing signs suggesting they might require more checks or treatment. <\/p>\n

Some underwent testing as long as two years ago. The regional government has said that about 90 per cent of the cases were linked to the Virgen del Roc\u00edo hospital in Seville, with the rest in M\u00e1laga and Jerez de la Frontera.<\/p>\n

Mr Moreno has announced an emergency plan aimed at addressing the situation, which would involve bolstering hospital radiology units to ensure that women affected are informed of their results and tested again by the end of November.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the next seven or eight weeks, all the women will be tested,\u201d said Carolina Espa\u00f1a, spokeswoman for the local government, which has said that the issue came to light only in \u201cthe last few days\u201d. <\/p>\n

However, representatives of the women affected say that the problems were uncovered long before that and that the local government was slow to act. <\/p>\n

According to Cadena Ser, a radio station that has investigated, the first complaints were made in early 2024, when several women said they had not been given feedback about tests. <\/p>\n

In the summer of last year, the president of Amama, an association representing women suffering breast cancer, informed the then head of healthcare of concerns about delays in diagnoses.<\/p>\n

When more complaints were aired at the end of September this year, the Andaluc\u00eda government said that there were just three cases of women in this situation. <\/p>\n

The following day, it admitted that the real number was about 2,000.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Andaluc\u00eda Healthcare Service knew of problems with screening diagnoses, but they didn\u2019t do anything about it for a year-and-a-half, when they pull out of their sleeve an emergency plan which is insufficient because women are going to have to wait up to two months to be tested,\u201d said Manuel Jim\u00e9nez, lawyer for Amama, which is bringing legal against the regional healthcare service.<\/p>\n

Labour unions have questioned the local government\u2019s ability to recruit more radiologists as part of its plan, citing the existing shortfall in this area. Andaluc\u00eda has 7.2 radiologists for every 100,000 inhabitants, the lowest of the country\u2019s 17 regions, which have a national average of 9.15 per 100,000.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The head of healthcare in the Spanish region of Andaluc\u00eda has resigned and the local government has been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":111999,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[275],"tags":[61,18,135,475,474,19,17,383],"class_list":{"0":"post-111998","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-cervical-check-scandal","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-health-care","12":"tag-healthcare","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-spain"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111998\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}