MONTREAL - Premier Jean Charest pleaded for patience Saturday from thousands of anxious women in Quebec who are concerned their breast cancer lab tests are flawed, and said officials were sensitive to how the women must feel.
"We're putting ourselves in the place of women who received treatment and diagnoses and who are now living with an anxiety they didn't feel before," he said.
Charest reassured them that health authorities are working as fast as they can to get answers.
"I can guarantee that we're doing everything we can to protect women's health," he told the media on Saturday, noting this incident shouldn't be compared to the string of botched tests recently uncovered in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Earlier this year, a provincial inquiry concluded that problems throughout Newfoundland and Labrador's health-care system led to at least 386 patients receiving the wrong results on tests.
Charest stressed that Quebec has been working for a year to create a provincewide quality control program for pathology labs and expressed concern for women whose course of treatment is now in doubt.
"We're aware of the impact that this has, which is why we're working as fast as possible to get the facts."
His appeal echoed statements made by Health Minister Yves Bolduc earlier in the day.
"We promise we'll clarify the situation as quickly as possible," the minister said during a morning news conference.
"We have to act quickly. As soon as we can give the public more information, we will."
Last Wednesday, a study revealed faults in the province's breast cancer testing, the results of which suggested that while some labs made the right diagnosis for more than 90 per cent of the samples, others had a success rate of less than 70 per cent.
The minister said that he understood the need for more information but the public will have to wait just a little longer.
"I want to tell them that we can give them more information but we need to wait for expert analysis," he said.
"We want the facts, we want the truth and we want to be transparent."
He outlined the steps that the government had taken since the study's release, noting it has contacted the province's pathologist labs to ensure quality control measures and has also put extra operators on its health hotline to respond to questions.
Bolduc is scheduled to meet with oncologists and pathologists Sunday to decide what to do about the report's findings. Quebec's college of physicians is also expected to release a broader study Monday on the problems with Quebec's cancer screening practices and assessments.
He said that for now, the government is focusing on getting the facts before it scrutinizes the system that led to the problems.
"At this moment we're not sure what we'd have done differently," he said. "Right now we're focusing on the current situation."
Each year, some 6,000 women in Quebec are diagnosed with breast cancer.
