Annette King apologises to Gisborne women

1.30 pm

Health Minister Annette King and Director-General of Health Karen Poutasi have apologised to women affected by the Gisborne cervical cancer scandal after the report of the cancer inquiry was released today.

"I have written to the women affected and apologised for the events of the past decade that led to the inquiry," Mrs King said in a statement.

Dr Poutasi said she understood women felt they had been let down by the system, and apologised for the distress they had suffered.

Mrs King promised law changes to prevent a repeat of the Gisborne disaster.

While some changes to the NCSP have already been implemented, the minister said she would introduce new laws for auditing the programme and to cover the mandatory reporting of bad practice and suspension of practitioners.

Meanwhile, Alliance health spokeswoman Phillida Bunkle said the report was "not broad enough" and she would have liked to see more direction on how to operate the screening programme into the future.

"It's not broad enough in its solutions."

The report was strong on issues it addressed but there were areas it did not focus on, such as patients' rights.

"It gives us a blueprint of what needs to happen without giving us a blueprint of how it's going to happen, so in a sense it throws that back into the political arena, back to the minister," she told NZPA.

The report backed independent monitoring and auditing but did not say where the programme needed to be located to be effective.

"It leaves it implicitly with the ministry. That means that the people who created the problem are still in charge of it unless there's a political decision to put it somewhere else," she said.

- NZPA

Full report of the Inquiry