Women in the lower North Island and upper South Island encounter a long wait for breast reconstruction surgery, with many district health boards incompetent to entertain any new referrals.

In such a scenario, women should realize that after a breast cancer surgery, reconstruction is a "now or never" option.

It is common mindset of women to delay reconstruction until the threat of cancer had passed.

Blenheim woman Liz Chapman had surgery to remove cancer from her breast in May 2001, followed by several weeks of chemotherapy and radiation treatment.

Enduring nearly a decade cancer-free was a encouraging thing for her. She claimed, "With my job, I get to go to some nice events and wear nice evening dresses, and it would be nice to be able to wear scoop necks and things like that". However, she added that it was "terrible" that women did not have access to surgery nationwide.

Hutt DHB acting chief executive Michael Hundleby said patients from Mrs. Chapman's area could not currently join the waiting list because of the backlog of patients.

DHB hoped to aim for increasing the number of operations it could perform and looking into the backlog of women who had been waiting for an operation by the end of the year.