Bowel cancer, the UK's second biggest cancer killer is to be identified early with a pioneering national screening programme.

The NHS is to invest £37.5 million over two years in the screening programme for men and women, which will initially be focused on people in their 60s, following the completion of successful pilot studies.

The government hopes to have the programme running across England by 2006.

Health Secretary John Reid said: "Preventing cancer and improving services for those who develop the disease continues to be a priority for this Government, and we have already made significant progress in reducing deaths from cancer.

The screening service will be the first of its kind in Europe and could save around 1,200 lives each year according to NHS Cancer Screening Programmes.

Programmes director, Julietta Patnick, said: "Our impressive track record in delivering world-class national screening programmes means we are ideally placed to implement the programme. Delivering this new bowel cancer screening programme is a challenge we are confident we'll meet successfully."

A screening method involving looking for blood in stools will have a phased introduction from April 2006 for men and women in their sixties after pilot studies showed it could cut the death rate for bowel cancer by 15%.

The next stage will involve large scale pilots of a second screening method involving endoscopies for people in their late fifties. Last year seven regional and three national endoscopy training centres were established to train more people to carry out endoscopies and ready the NHS for a screening programme. By the end of 2004/5 there will be 345 newly trained endoscopists and 88 new trainers.

Bowel (colorectal) cancer is a malignant (cancerous) growth that starts on the inside wall of the bowel. It can grow there for a relatively long time before spreading to other parts of the body. Bowel cancer can develop in any part of the large bowel, including the colon and rectum.

A number of advances in drug treatment are now emerging for the disease, including two new approvals this year, Erbitux (marketed by ImClone/BMS in the US and Merck KgaA in Europe) and Genentech/Roche's Avastin.

Related articles:

Patients still being denied access to colon cancer treatments 

Wednesday, April 28, 2004

pharmafocus@wiley.co.uk