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Hancock must stop privatisation of cervical screening services, Unite warns

HEALTH Secretary Matt Hancock must stop his attempted privatisation of cervical cancer screenings as it would further damage a service which is already in crisis, Unite warned today.

The warning follows recent claims by the British Association for Cytopathology that the service is in “meltdown.”

The launch of a Public Health England campaign at the start of this month to encourage more women to attend cervical screenings  has led to increased demand — but this coincides with scientific staff leaving laboratories because of uncertainty over their jobs as a result of possible privatisation.

And the staffing crisis will worsen if the tenders, which would reduce tomorrow’s 46 laboratories to nine, are allowed to go ahead, the union said.

Successful bidders on the services are expected to be announced on April 12.

NHS England has said that it would take the administration of the service back in-house from outsourcing company Capita from June, after it was revealed more than 40,000 women had not received the appropriate smear test information.

Unite national officer for health Colenzo Jarrett-Thrope called on Mr Hancock to suspend the tendering process so a full review can take place.

He said this would be to ensure a smooth transition to primary testing for the HPV virus — which can lead to cervical cancer — without backlogs and delays to patients.

In a letter, Mr Jarrett-Thorpe said: “There are already several months of backlogs in patients receiving their cervical test results.

“This is traumatic for patients and is caused by not just the extra demand for cervical screening, but also the shortage of scientific staff who conduct the tests.

“Some are deciding to leave the service rather than taking a chance to find out if their laboratory will be a winner in the tendering process.

“The recent National Audit Office report on health screening highlights several warnings that the roll-out of the HPV programme and the resulting staff shortages will affect performance by causing backlogs and delays leading to missed targets for sample turnaround times.”

Mr Jarrett-Thorpe added that the announcement by NHS England on Capita “strongly reinforces” the union’s argument that the outsourcing of NHS services to “profit-hungry companies is a fatally flawed model.”

A “shareholder price tag” cannot be placed on women’s health, he also said.

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