June 30, 2016
Delays make bowel cancer critical
Maori are being urged to take up the opportunity for free bowel cancer screening in a trial run by Waitemata District Health Board.
Free bowel screening will gradually be extended across the country, with Upper Hutt and Wairarapa the next areas to be covered.
The screen involves taking a small sample and sending it to be tested, with rapid escalation to colonoscopy testing if blood is detected.
The pilot’s clinical director, Mike Hulme-Moir, says there’s a one in 23 chance of developing bowel cancer by the age of 75.
About half the people approached take up the offer of screening, but for Maori the number is 6 percent lower.
"When Maori do get bowel cancer they tend to present a bit later and so they do a bit worse overall. With bowel screening we tend to pick up the cancers a lot earlier and so therefore the chance of curing them is a lot higher and that is a big difference if you look at people who come through bowel screening and people who come through the non bowel-screening route," Dr Hulme-Moir says.
A bowel cancer atlas released today by the Health Quality and Safety Commission found 39 percent of bowel cancers in Maori were only found when people turned up at emergency departments, but the average varied among district health boards from 23 to 58 percent.
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