It will be 2019 before Irish women have full access foetal anomaly scans

Women won’t have full access for two more years.

It will be 2019 at the earliest before the women of Ireland have full access to foetal anomaly scans the HSE says. The Health Service Executive has announced the planned timeline for October 2019, however, they say it is all dependant on funding to recruit the 52 new sonographers they would need. The news comes as the number of women over 40 having children continues to rise with those numbers seeing a 62 percent increase between 2005 and 2015. However, with many women having to wait another two years before getting access to the scans, many experts are saying it is too late.

“23,000 women in Ireland did not get an anatomy scan last year,” consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist at Cork University Maternity Hospital Louise Kenny told the Irish Examiner. “Unequivocally, cases of foetal abnormality were missed, and in some cases, the misdiagnoses presented a lost opportunity to intervene early in that child’s life.”

The scan is done between weeks 20 and 22 and it is used to check on the baby’s development and to help identify any potential problems that may not appear in an early dating scan. Experts say that without the scan many problems can go undetected leading to possible complications later in the pregnant.