THE impact of an NHS error that saw 450,000 women miss out on an invitation for breast screening is still not known in Salisbury.

Public Health England announced earlier this month that a number of invitations for tests had not been sent out to women aged between 68 and 71 since 2009.

Despite this, three weeks on from the initial announcement the Journal has not been able to find out how many women registered for breast screening with Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust have been affected.

Analysis suggested that 309,000 of the women who were not invited for a screening are still alive, and women now aged between 70 to 79 who may have missed out were told they would receive a letter by the end of the month with further information.

A spokesman for Salisbury District Hospital said all enquiries were being dealt with by Public Health England (PHE), who in turn said no figures were available.

A PHE spokesman said this was because figures released so far are “national estimates” and reliable local data is not available.

They would not answer questions on how appointment letters were being sent out to affected women if it was not known which breast screening service they would be registered with, whether people would have to visit different hospitals or how hospitals can schedule the extra appointments needed if they do not know how many to expect.

The spokesman referred the Journal to NHS England (who referred the query back to PHE) and said: “All women affected who wish to have a breast screen will receive an appointment to take place before the end of October 2018 and most will be by the end of July. NHS England is working closely with all local services and commissioners to ensure that they can co-ordinate any extra screening required across the programme”.

There are 79 local NHS breast screening services across the country.

Women are routinely screened every three years, with between 25,738 and 254,645 women invited to each individual screening.