Compensation for 'smear' victims

The women will receive compensation from the NHS

A group of women in Leicestershire who were wrongly given the all-clear after cervical smear tests have received a total of £300,000 in an interim compensation payment.

Earlier this year Leicestershire Health Authority revealed the smear tests of 136 women had been misread.

Jane Williams, a solicitor who represents 60 of the women, said her clients had received a total interim payment "in the region of £300,000."

The Leicestershire NHS Trust would not reveal the exact amount of interim compensation for the remaining women.

False results

Full payments are expected to be processed in the new year, and Ms Williams said some of them will be "quite sizeable sums".

Hundreds of Leicestershire women called helplines in the wake of the blunders in cervical screening in Leicestershire, which emerged in May 2001.

Some of the results were inaccurate

An audit released by the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust in May said 14 women who had been given the all-clear after smears had died of cervical cancer.

The audit also found a further 64 needed hysterectomies or other surgery, because signs of cancer were not detected through routine testing.

The audit in Leicestershire covered 403 local women diagnosed with cervical cancer between January 1993 and August 2000.

Of those, 84 had been given "false negative" results and 38 were classified as "undergrades".

Dr Rashmi Shukla of Leicestershire public health said: "Cervical screening is still the best means available for detection of changes that may lead to cervical cancer at an early stage, despite the inherent risk of discrepancies."