ST. JOHN'S, N.L. - The Newfoundland and Labrador government has discovered more than three dozen documents that haven't been submitted to a public inquiry into faulty breast cancer tests, forcing testimony from the province's former health minister to be delayed until Friday.
Crown lawyer Rolf Pritchard told the inquiry Thursday that the provincial government has unearthed about 40 documents relevant to the inquiry.
The discovery comes after a senior civil servant forwarded three e-mails late Monday that also weren't provided to the inquiry.
The bureaucrat said he came across the new messages after a change in software allowed a more thorough search of archived e-mails.
The e-mails date back to July 19, 2005, the day former health minister John Ottenheimer says his staff told the premier's office about cancer testing problems.
Pritchard said the government is still searching for documents, but adds that the process is close to complete.
The discovery means interviews with witnesses will have to be redone, said inquiry counsel Bern Coffey.
Coffey said he expects to resume questioning Ottenheimer on Friday.
The inquiry is examining how 383 breast-cancer patients were given inaccurate results on their tests and whether the Eastern Health board or any other responsible authorities responded to them and the public in an appropriate and timely manner.
On Monday, Ottenheimer testified that he became aware of problems with breast cancer testing on July 19, 2005, during a meeting with George Tilley, then the CEO of the Eastern Health authority.
Ottenheimer said his communications director told the premier's office about the problem when it became clear that the issue was "of critical public concern.''
Last year, Williams told the legislature he first became aware of the faulty tests in October 2005 after a story appeared in an independent weekly newspaper.
The full scope of the testing errors wasn't revealed until May 2007, after court documents were filed in the province's Supreme Court as part of a class-action lawsuit against Eastern Health showing more than 300 patients were affected by the botched tests.
Williams is expected to testify at the inquiry, though a date hasn't been set.
The inquiry is focusing on hormone-receptor tests, which are a valuable tool that doctors use in determining the course of treatment for breast cancer patients.
If patients are found to be estrogen- and/or progesterone-positive, they may respond to hormone therapy such as Tamoxifen. If not, they may be given a range of other treatments, or no treatment at all, depending on the characteristics of the patient's cancer.
Problems with the testing weren't detected until the spring of 2005, when doctors began questioning the hormone-receptor test results of a patient with invasive lobular carcinoma, a form of breast cancer.
After retesting, it was discovered that the initial test result was wrong, as were those for a small sample of other patients.
Eastern Health subsequently halted testing in its lab and transferred its hormone-receptor tests to Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto.
The health board then started a review of all hormone-receptor tests from 1997 to 2005.
