A CANCER victim embroiled in a multimillion-pound damages action against the NHS has been handed £150,000 by the health board she is suing to pay for private medical care.

Helen McGlone is claiming £5 million from NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde after medics failed to spot cancer symptoms in her smear test early enough to avoid a hysterectomy.

However, her lawyer, Andrew Smith, QC, yesterday secured an interim payment in advance of the court’s final decision.

He said Ms McGlone, who has a PhD in particle physics, believed private radiotherapy treatment could help her condition, but she was unable to afford it.

“She is very short of money,” said Mr Smith.

After some argument at the Court of Session in Edinburgh over the legal technicalities, health board counsel Alan McLean, QC, offered £150,000.

The informal agreement was welcomed by Lord Tyre, who said he did not believe he had any power to order an interim payment.

Ms McGlone, from Falkirk, launched her civil action against the health board in 2008, blaming them for shattering her career plans and hopes of becoming a mother with a botched smear test.

The Glasgow University graduate, who achieved a first-class degree in physics and applied mathematics before going on to complete her PhD, had begun attending the Sandyford Clinic in Glasgow in May 2005 because she was having health problems. She was 25 at the time.

Six months later, a cervical smear taken at the city’s Royal Infirmary did not work properly and a repeat test was carried out at the clinic in December 2005.

The test was initially reported as “negative” but an audit later decided the test was “inadequate” rather than negative and a repeat test was recommended.

After completing her studies in Glasgow she went to Cern, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, in Geneva, Switzerland.

A check-up she undertook by chance while living in Geneva in January 2008 revealed that she had invasive cancer of the cervix, which required radical surgery.

At an earlier hearing at the Court of Session, Ms McGlone said Swiss doctors were surprised to discover she had cancer since previous tests had not alerted Scottish medics to the symptoms.

NHS GGC has already admitted being at fault and a judge at the Court of Session in Edinburgh threw out a claim that an earlier diagnosis would have made no difference.

Ms McGlone still faces further court hearings to determine the level of damages to be awarded.

However, she has argued successfully that if smear tests had been correctly interpreted her cervical cancer could have been stopped at an earlier stage, avoiding the need for a hysterectomy to remove the tumour.

She told the court that her life and career ambitions had been blighted by the doctors’ errors.

Ms McGlone said her qualifications and research would have enabled her to work in the financial sector and she had planned to seek a job with an investment bank or other large organisation, earning a substantial salary and big bonuses.

She is now considering retraining and studying for a degree that will enable her to work with children’s charities.

Ms McGlone argues that her final compensation settlement should include the cost of retraining and of the private medical treatment she has undergone.

This has included expensive fertility treatment at a private clinic in the US to improve her chances of having children.