Thousands of readers are backing a campaign by the Yellow Advertiser over breast screening in Essex.

The Basildon-based title is calling for a charity-run breast screening unit in Southend to be allowed to resume palpation (by touch) examinations.

Senior reporter Lisa Mundy broke the story that the Royal College of Nursing had told the Lady McAdden unit to stop the practice earlier this year.

Regular follow-ups fuelled the Breast Friends campaign and a petition calling for the ban to be lifted has been signed by 5,000 people.

The unit is the only one of its kind in the country, offering free examinations to women of all ages.

Lisa said the RCN and the Government claimed that palpation gave women a false sense of security. They argued that women would go home thinking they were all right because their breasts had been examined by a nurse and would then not bother to check themselves for abnormalities.

“From the research I’ve done, that’s absolute rubbish,” she said. “Most people who go to a unit probably examine themselves better because they have been shown how to by a nurse.”

Her initial story, used as the P1 lead in 14 editions of the paper across Essex, asked readers what they thought of the ban.

“We’ve been swamped with letters,” Lisa said.

“We’ve had the most heartbreaking letters from women who have had first-hand experience of the good these nurses do and people who have lost family who weren’t lucky enough to have this service.”

Lisa hopes ultimately to present the petition at Westminster to Health Secretary Alan Milburn.

She joined the Yellow Advertiser five years ago and was awarded a certificate of merit in the Weekly News Journalist of the Year category of the annual Newspaper Society awards last week. Her entries included an expose of a psychiatrist – subsequently sacked – who sexually abused his patients, and coverage of a vicious attack, including exclusive CCTV footage of the attackers, who were later arrested.

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