Bowel cancer: calls for screening age to be lowered in Northern Ireland
Charity says people should be tested at 50 not 60
Last updated 16th Oct 2023
Patients joined Bowel Cancer UK today (Monday) in Stormont to demand a change to Northern Ireland's screening programme.
They said screening should be offered from the age of 50 like it is in other parts of the UK - rather than the current age of 60.
Carrick man Chris Robinson, who was diagnosed with bowel cancer six years ago when he was 52.
He told Downtown Radio & Cool FM that had he been able to have a screen at 50 he would not have had to wait for two years to be told he had cancer.
It I hadn't had gone private I would have been stage 3 - one in 10 - I probably would have been dead," he said.
"If I had been able to get that screen at 50, it would have been caught. It is a horrendous disease to go through."
Genevieve Edwards, chief executive of Bowel Cancer UK, said 23 people were diagnosed with bowel cancer every week and eight people die.
"It shouldn’t be that way because it’s treatable, curable and even preventable," she said.
"The UK screening committee recommended the optimum levels for screening. They said screen from 50 every two years” at a certain level of sensitivity.
“Unfortunately, here in Northern Ireland we are screening at 60 instead of 50. And instead of a sensitivity of 20 micrograms of blood in the poo we are screening at 120.
"There's a long way to go to improve that. This has been a problem that is stretched back years."
Meanwhile, at the front of Stormont today there was a huge inflatable bowel (main picture) to show the various stage of the illness.