NHS breast screening error leaves 309,000 women with an agonising six month wait to find out if they have cancer

HUNDREDS of thousands of women will today begin an agonising six-month wait to find out if they have breast cancer after a "colossal" NHS IT glitch.

Health bosses are trying to contact 309,000 women who missed screening scans because of computer failings dating back almost a decade.

Up to 270 women could have died as a result of the blunder, which meant 450,000 women aged between 68 and 71 weren't invited for their last mammogram, between 2009 and the start of this year.

The deadly mistake was flagged by NHS bosses last year, but Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt waited four months to tell the public.

He revealed the "administrative incompetency" to Parliament yesterday but said that women affected would have to wait until the end of October for their checks to avoid disrupting screening for those aged between 50 and 70.

Nurse Patricia Minchin is one of those women.

The 75-year-old was diagnosed with breast cancer after the NHS failed to offer her a scan – with the disease since spreading to her lymph nodes.

Grandmother Patricia should have been invited for a mammogram in 2013 when she turned 70 but she wasn't and was diagnosed with breast cancer two years later, Telegraph reports.

"I feel so disappointed. I don’t know if I’m going to survive," she said.

"I would like an explanation from somebody why this happened, why I didn’t get a recall… why didn’t they pick up that I hadn’t had a mammogram? That I was one of those people?"

She accused the NHS of a "cover up", adding: "They obviously knew about it for some time and they shouldn’t have covered it up for so long.

"It was no surprise to me that it had happened. It was a surprise they kept it quiet. They must have known."

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