Rutland Urged to Boost Bowel Cancer Screening Uptake
Early detection can save lives, says local NHS chief
People in Rutland are being urged to take part in bowel cancer screening, as the NHS highlights the importance of catching the disease early.
Currently, seventy-nine percent of eligible people in the area do the test, which is sent every two years to everyone aged fifty to seventy-four.
Professor Nilesh Sanganee, Chief Medical Officer at Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland Integrated Care Board, said:
“It is completely treatable if it's caught at an early stage. And we want to improve the number of patients who are picked up with bowel cancer much earlier on because their outcomes are significantly better.”
He added: “The bowel cancer screening programme can actually even prevent some forms of cancer because it can pick up a polyp early on in the stages of development before it's properly developed into a cancer. So this is a really important screening programme.”
Professor Sanganee explained that some people worry the test is undignified, but said: “Actually it's really quick and easy, and you can do that in the privacy of your own home.”
He also stressed the need for greater awareness:
“I think actually awareness of bowel cancer is less compared to some other cancers, and people probably aren't aware that it's one of the commonest cancers that we see in the UK."
"People really fear cancer is something that's quite scary, but there are steps that we can all take to prevent it. And from a bowel cancer point of view, this is the simplest thing that people can do over the age of fifty and up to the age of seventy-four.”