Cancer inquiry to rule on recall of witnesses

By FRANCESCA MOLD and FIONA BARBER

The head of a cervical cancer inquiry will today decide whether to subpoena witnesses to explain why they failed to "look back" at Gisborne women's smears over the past four years.

Ailsa Duffy will rule on an application from a lawyer for the women, Stuart Grieve, QC, to compel representatives from Medlab Hamilton and Medlab Gisborne to give further evidence.

Mr Grieve is seeking the return of the laboratories' managing director, Dr Brian Linehan, and the Gisborne branch manager, Janet Wilson.

He also wants to hear evidence from a cytopathologist working at the Hamilton lab. Mr Grieve said questioning would relate to several of the inquiry's terms of reference - how mistakes of under-reporting should be addressed and whether measures had since been taken.

"This highlights a potential systemic issue of how smears historically are dealt with."

During his testimony last week, Dr Linehan admitted that his laboratory conducted "lookbacks" of slides from Hamilton women but did not do the same for Gisborne women because it was "logistically difficult."

When Medlab Hamilton purchased Dr Bottrill's laboratory at the time of his retirement in 1996, thousands of smears from Gisborne women were left in boxes in an outdoor shed and cabinets within the buildings.

Their results were never logged into the database at the Hamilton laboratory.

If past smears need to be reviewed, Ms Wilson has to search through boxes to find the requested slide.

Dr Linehan said it was a difficult process and, in any case, cytopathologists focused on diagnosing the current slide rather than reviewing history.

Panel member and pathologist Maire Duggan told Dr Linehan: "It is the practice to look back at past smears in terms of reporting the current smears."

Dr Linehan replied: "If you say so."

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