April is Bowel Cancer Awareness Month. That is why we have chosen this month to launch CancerWatch’s new campaign Action Against Bowel Cancer, which is calling for a stronger focus on bowel cancer prevention and early diagnosis.
Awareness of bowel cancer has increased over recent years. It is anyway one of the most common forms of cancer (fourth most common). And awareness has been further boosted by the campaigning of the late Dame Deborah James who so famously coined the term ‘Bowelbabe’, and more recently by the death of actor James Van Der Beek.
But understanding of bowel cancer prevention – what people can actually do to help protect themselves from bowel cancer – remains too low. This is especially important as the evidence suggests that more than half (54%) of cases of bowel cancer are preventable.
The most important risk factor by far is eating too little fibre. Nearly a third (28%) of cases of bowel cancer are caused by low fibre diets. And we know that 96% of adults and 90% of children in Britain eat too little fibre. Other important risk factors include eating processed meats (13% of cases) and being overweight or obese (11%).
How many people could be spared the pain of a cancer diagnosis if we took this understanding and applied it more seriously?
Our campaign Action Against Bowel Cancer will ask this question, and we will challenge policymakers to look seriously at how we can boost the number of British people eating high fibre diets.
Our first recommendation is that new school food standards are updated to include the latest scientific advice, including on fibre. And we have already seen the government take major steps towards this in the last few days – not a bad start!
We’re also asking if we can go further to improve early diagnosis of bowel cancer to save more lives. Bowel cancer screening has been successful in increasing early detection rates and saving lives. And over recent years we’ve seen welcome progress with the extension of screening to those aged 50-54, and the sensitivity of the screening test being increased to help catch more cases.
But screening still only detects 12% of cases. So, we’ll also be arguing that we need to build up diagnostic capacity to allow us to further increase the sensitivity of the screening test, and that we should fully review the case for extending screening to those aged 75-79.
Over the course of the next few weeks, we will be writing to the Minister for Public Health, the Minister for Early Education (who has responsibility for school meals) and the UK National Screening Committee, which makes recommendations to the government on all screening programmes. We will also be engaging with MPs and peers about these issues.
We believe that with a much stronger focus on prevention and continued improvements in the screening programme, alongside continuing improvements in treatment, we could be aiming to virtually eliminate, or at least radically reduce deaths from bowel cancer over the coming decades.
Wouldn’t that be an achievement worth fighting for?!