Her comments follow yesterday's final review of the inquiry from Scottish pathologist Euphemia McGoogan, which criticised the Ministry of Health for not following and implementing many recommendations.
Dozens of women developed cervical cancer and some died after under-reporting of cervical smears during the 1990s by former Gisborne pathologist Dr Michael Bottrill.
After a multimillion-dollar 12-week inquiry into the Gisborne scandal and shortcomings in the national cervical screening programme, which did not pick up Dr Bottrill's mistakes, 46 recommendations were made to fix the problems.
The ministry appointed Dr McGoogan as watchdog to ensure they were implemented.
Health Minister Annette King said yesterday that she recognised there were many areas to improve, but a good deal of progress had been made in the past three years.
She was confident the screening programme was safe for women despite Dr McGoogan's concerns, and said it was being reviewed every three months by Otago University.
But Dr Peters said the work by Otago University was irrelevant.
"They are looking at a set of indicators, numbers. That is important in its own right but it has nothing to do with the recommendations from the Gisborne inquiry."
She said a panel of people with relevant backgrounds should be set up to follow the progress of the recommendations, since there would be no more follow-up from Dr McGoogan or anyone else.
Dr McGoogan's report yesterday said 10 recommendations had been completed, seven were well in hand, work had begun on another seven, six were being reconsidered by ethics committees, eight were subject to legislation changes and the progress of six others was unclear.
Two of the original recommendations were not being implemented.
Dr McGoogan was extremely critical of the time it was taking to complete the $3.5 million nationwide cervical cancer audit, looking at the history of all women diagnosed with cervical cancer between January 1, 2000, and September 30 last year.
The inquiry said the audit was needed urgently to ensure that problems that let down women in Gisborne were not more widespread.
The Otago Medical School professor of preventive medicine, David Skegg, said an investigation should be made into why changes the minister promised after the Gisborne inquiry had not been done.
Yesterday, Director of Public Health Dr Colin Tukuitonga, who took over Dr Peters' role in heading the cervical cancer audit, said he was disappointed by Dr McGoogan's findings on its progress.
"I think she doesn't understand it in the New Zealand context.
"Our laws are different, our society is different and we are much more consultative than other people."
He said people were also expecting too much from the audit.
Any perception of a perfect system was unrealistic.
"Even in the best programmes in the world, anything between 10 to 15 per cent of slides can be misread."
Euphemia McGoogan:
Report on the National Cervical Screening Programme and progress towards Implementation of the Gisborne Inquiry Recommendations
Herald Feature: Gisborne Cervical Screening Inquiry
Related links
