Bowel cancer home screening saves lives – we must increase the uptake
An NHS letter for undertaking bowel cancer detection with a return home sample kit (Yon Marsh/Alamy)
3 min read
This April marks Bowel Cancer Awareness Month. Bowel cancer is the UK’s fourth most common cancer and the second biggest cause of cancer death.
Every 12 minutes someone is diagnosed with bowel cancer, which remains the UK’s second biggest cancer killer, with around 17,400 people losing their lives from the disease every year.
These figures are stark, but they are not inevitable. Bowel cancer is often treatable and, if it is diagnosed early, in many cases curable. More than nine in 10 people diagnosed at the earliest stage will survive bowel cancer for five years or more, compared with around one in 10 diagnosed at the latest stage.
This is why screening matters so much: it is one of the best ways to diagnose people early and participation really can save lives. The NHS has made great strides in improving bowel cancer screening over the 20 years since it began in England, with people aged 50 to 74 now being sent a free home Faecal Immunochemical Test (FIT) through the post every two years.
However, recent data from Bowel Cancer UK shows that around a third of people (33 per cent) eligible for bowel cancer screening in the UK don’t complete their test.
England has the highest average of people taking part in screening (71 per cent) compared with other UK nations: Scotland (65.7 per cent), Wales (65.5 per cent) and Northern Ireland (67.3 per cent). So, while we can celebrate some great work to date, these figures show that there’s still room to improve screening uptake even further.
We also know participation in screening is lower in some communities than in others, exacerbating health inequalities, and people may put it off for all sorts of reasons. Life is busy, symptoms may be overlooked, and there is still too much embarrassment around a subject that should be discussed far more openly.
Despite the challenges, it’s positive to see some of the progress being made in helping with early diagnosis across the whole UK over the past few years. We’ve recently seen the publication of the National Cancer Plan in England, and changes to the screening sensitivity test used in England and Wales – reducing the threshold for how much blood in a screening sample needs to be present to trigger a referral for more tests. The NHS estimates that this will lead to the early detection of around 600 additional cancers and identify around 2,000 more people with high-risk polyps that can be removed before they become cancerous.
Participation in screening is lower in some communities than in others, exacerbating health inequalities
In Scotland, a cancer strategy which identifies bowel cancer as one of three cancers to be prioritised in an initial three-year action plan has been launched, and the Northern Ireland Executive is currently exploring reducing the bowel cancer screening age to 50, in line with the rest of the UK. These are welcome steps, but we also need action from those eligible to take the test and return it. The message is simple. Early diagnosis saves lives. If you are sent a bowel cancer screening test, complete it and send it back as soon as possible. And if you notice symptoms such as a persistent change in bowel habits, unexplained weight loss, abdominal pain or ongoing fatigue, do not ignore them – ask to see your GP.
Bowel Cancer Awareness Month is an important opportunity to raise awareness, encourage more people to take up screening, and support everyone affected by the disease, so they have the best chance of an early diagnosis, and we all have the best chance to save more lives.
Stuart Andrew is Conservative MP for Daventry and shadow secretary of state for health and social care
