Medical negligence lawyer warns that Phelan case is ‘tip of the iceberg’

A medical negligence lawyer has warned that Vicky Phelan’s high-profile case against the HSE over failures to detect her terminal cervical cancer is just “the tip of the iceberg”.

Órla Kelly, partner in medical law at Cantillons Solicitors in Cork, told the Irish Independent that further cases “are going to start to emerge” in the next few weeks.

Ms Phelan’s case is one of at least nine issued in the past few years against laboratories involved in cervical cancer screenings.

Ms Kelly is taking a case on behalf of another woman who alleges that the HSE and MedLab Pathology Ltd gave her the all-clear for three years before her cancer was detected retrospectively.

She said her client later learned there were three occasions when indicators of the cancer could have been detected but weren’t.

Ireland’s cervical cancer screening programme uses three labs: Quest Diagnostics in New Jersey; MedLab Pathology Ltd in Dublin; and Coombe Women and Infants University Hospital in Dublin.