5,000 tests cancelled after cancer-screening vans break
With both vehicles out of order, organization cannot provide service
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/12/2017 (2324 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
CancerCare Manitoba’s mobile breast cancer-screening program is on hiatus after its two vehicles were hit with mechanical issues.
The vans, which together serve people in 90 communities on a two-year rotating basis, first hit the road in 2011.
CancerCare put one on a planned break this winter to address long-standing mechanical issues, said Dr. Donna Turner, provincial director of population oncology.
Then, the other one broke down.
More than 5,000 rural Manitobans will need to rebook appointments as a result.
“The service is still there,” Turner said Thursday, “we’ve just hit a figurative speed bump.”
The vehicles act as transport for the equipment needed for mammograms.
The pink-labelled vans cart around X-ray equipment, supplies and — of course — the necessary staff to various hospitals, clinics and community centres to administer the tests.
It’s an important service.
Every year, roughly 900 Manitoba women are diagnosed with breast cancer, and about 200 will die from it.
Routine screenings such as the ones delivered by the vans are linked with a 20 per cent to 30 per cent reduction in deaths, CancerCare said.
“We know some women are very disappointed that their appointments are cancelled,” Turner said.
CancerCare is offering people the opportunity to rebook their appointments in Winnipeg, Brandon, Boundary Trails or Thompson.
More than 5,000 appointments will be cancelled over the two-month period. The program routinely does around 50,000 appointments every year.
“It’s a sizable number,” Turner said, but “we have very creative staff and we will be looking for lots of ways of catching up.”
Despite the impact on people needing mammograms, she stressed the mechanical issues will have no impact on those receiving or needing to receive treatment for breast cancer.
The program does screening only; it doesn’t provide care.
“(If) we’re talking about somebody who has symptoms, who has a lump,” she said, “we’re always recommending women go straight to their doctor.”
Turner said she expects the vans will be back on the road at the start of February.
jane.gerster@freepress.mb.ca
