Galway Bay fm newsroom - The number of women screened for breast cancer at UHG so far this year has dropped by 80 percent as a result of Covid-19.
While BreastCheck services have resumed in recent weeks, the numbers screened to that point are just a fraction of the figure for 2019.
Last year, 10, 675 women availed of the BreastCheck screening service at University Hospital Galway.
This year, screening was paused in March, due to the emergence of Covid-19.
By that point, just 2,167 women had been seen at the city hospital. .
While services resumed last month, they'll still operate at reduced capacity due to Covid-19 - with the HSE estimating it could take several years to clear the backlog.
The matter arose at this week's meeting of the Health Forum West - where it was revealed that overall, hospitals in the Saolta Hospital Group screened just over 8 thousand people between January and March.
That compares to a figure of almost 50 thousand for the 9 hospitals in the group that offer BreastCheck screening throughout last year.
