Peter Dawe: 'Eastern Health should be so curious about what happened with all of these people, so that people can learn from it.' (CBC)

The Canadian Cancer Society says it is unacceptable that Newfoundland and Labrador health officials cannot say how cancer patients who received inaccurate test results actually died.

Health Minister Ross Wiseman said in March that 108 breast cancer patients who had received flawed hormone receptor test results between 1997 and 2005 had died.

CBC News applied under provincial access to information legislation for a list of the exact causes of death for each of those patients.

Since then, no one has yet compiled information on what exactly caused the deaths of the 108 patients. Provincial officials say they simply do not know.

That highlights a serious flaw in the database that the provincial government constructed about errors in estrogen receptor and progesterone receptor testing, said Peter Dawe, executive director of the Canadian Cancer Society's Newfoundland and Labrador division.

"It's critically important for the system," Dawe told CBC News.

"The system should be studying [this and] Eastern Health should be so curious about what happened with all of these people, so that people can learn from it."

Wiseman revealed the number of deaths while releasing the results of a patient database shortly before the Cameron inquiry began hearing evidence in March. The inquiry was struck to find out what went wrong inside the Eastern Health pathology lab, and how officials responded in 2005 when the problems were identified.

The province's cancer registry has recently hired more staff, and promises that it will soon be tracking all cancer patient deaths.

Dr. Simon Avis, the province's chief medical examiner, said there are still other issues to resolve. A 2005 study found that many death certificates are not always accurate. For instance, 23 per cent of surveyed certificates were not filled in correctly.

Dawe said that if government officials do not do a comprehensive study of what happened to people diagnosed with breast cancer since 1997, the Cancer Society will.