Women and the opposition are denouncing mammogram manipulation, and the Prosecutor's Office is already investigating cancer screening in Andalusia.

BarcelonaThe Andalusian Prosecutor's Office has opened an investigation into the complaints it has received regarding errors in the early detection program for breast cancer. The first step was to request a report from the Andalusian Regional Government's Ministry of Health, which also demands an explanation of the measures it has taken "to compensate the victims and prevent future similar incidents." The Public Prosecutor's Office's decision comes in a week in which the crisis surrounding breast cancer screening has further fueled political debate in Andalusia. In fact, women and the opposition are criticizing the Andalusian government for manipulating some mammograms that appear on platforms accessible to both patients and professionals.

In a statement released Thursday, the Prosecutor's Office explained that it has sent the regional government a copy of the complaints it has received so that it can respond to its request for information. Complaints have been filed about errors in breast cancer screening in Andalusia. They refer to the early detection program for this disease, and the Prosecutor's Office points out that they could be due to "defective functioning or application of the integrated care process."

Before deciding to open an investigation, the Andalusian High Prosecutor's Office had received complaints from the Patient Advocate Association—which has been expanding its efforts to include specific cases of affected women—Adelante Andalucía, and EU – Convocatoria por Andalucía. Aside from these cases, other complaints have been filed with the Provincial Prosecutor's Office in Seville, and other complainants have opted to go to court. Sources from the Andalusian High Court warned a few days ago that it was impossible to conduct a complete count because the cases may have been filed in different cities and there is no common database.

One of those that went directly to court is the Seville law firm Sires Abogados, with a complaint for homicide on behalf of the family of a man who died in July at the age of 86 after "not being treated with due diligence by the Andalusian public health system," and another on behalf of the family.

Evidence deleted or altered?

This week, the Association of Women with Breast Cancer (AMAMA) also filed a complaint related to screening, this time with the Seville Prosecutor's Office. Specifically, the organization warned that information related to mammograms and ultrasounds previously recorded on the Andalusian Health Service (SAS) platforms, where patients can consult them, had been deleted from some women's medical records. Sources from the organization explained to ARA that they have also reported that some reports on the digital platforms ClicSalud (for users) and Diraya (used in the public health system) have had changes in some of the diagnostic nomenclature. In some cases, they suggest that the document has disappeared or the name of the professional who signed the report has been erased.

The disappearance or deletion of this data also reached the government's oversight session in the Andalusian Parliament this Thursday. The spokesperson for the left-wing coalition Por Andalucía, Inmaculada Nieto, showed the mammogram of a patient who appeared on the program ClicSalud, with the lesion marked and the name of the doctor who performed it, and then a copy of the mammogram that has "reappeared" in her medical records, where the blockage is missing. Both versions of the diagnosis, the MP adds, occurred before and after the system went down, which went out of service on Tuesday and was restored on Wednesday.

The rest of the opposition also criticized the Regional Government's handling of the errors with the screenings during Wednesday's plenary session, in which they criticized the absence of President Juanma Moreno Bonilla. PSOE-A, Por Andalucía, and Adelante Andalucía agreed in the criticism, which was also echoed by Vox. This Thursday, the First Vice President of the Spanish government and Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, also referred to the disappearance of the tests from the plenary session of Congress. She accused the Andalusian PP executive of doing "absolutely nothing" about the breast screening crisis and criticized its failure to explain the disappearance of reports and images from the ClicSalud app.

The screening scandal is the biggest political crisis that Juanma Moreno Bonilla has had to face since he became president of Andalusia in 2019, and it has already claimed the first political leader with the dismissal of the Andalusian Health Minister, Rocío HernándezThe Andalusian government has already admitted that there have been errors in the diagnosis of this disease and At first, the number of people affected was estimated at around two thousand., although the complainants suggest that there could be more.