Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 29 May 2024

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health

Challenges Facing Community-based Cancer Support Services: Discussion

Ms Gemma Fort:

To address the Senator's point on screening, all of our centres would promote awareness about the various cancer awareness weeks, bowel screening, BreastCheck, cervical smear week and all of that, for example. That is really important, as is early detection. Part of our intake assessment for new clients is that if they mention symptoms, we would always say they need to go back to their oncologist because they need to be their own advocate for their own health. Our clinical staff would feed into networks whereby they would identify new patterns emerging. Screening is always vital and we have seen that with the success of various programmes. We can only feed into that in terms of identification but I do not believe we would have a role in determining what those programmes would be. I hope that answers the question.

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