BMJ  2006;332:742 (1 April), doi:10.1136/bmj.38797.494757.47 (published 22 March 2006)

Editorial

Impending or pending? The national bowel cancer screening programme

The NHS cash crisis must not delay this vital programme for long

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The government has, on several occasions, made a strong case for a national bowel cancer screening programme1 2 and in 2004 it committed to providing £37.5m ({euro}54m; $65.5m) over two years for a programme to begin in April 2006.3 4 This deadline cannot be met, because it will take around six months to commission the screening centres, and no funding has yet been provided. The NHS financial crisis is clearly the cause of the delay, but it is unclear if this is a temporary hiccough or a shelving of the programme.

The case for screening is clear. Bowel cancer is second only to lung cancer as a cause of cancer deaths in the United Kingdom. Furthermore, in 2004 the number of deaths from bowel cancer (16 148) exceeded the number from breast cancer (12 347) and cervical cancer (1093), diseases for which there are already effective, well run screening programmes. . . . [Full text of this article]

Wendy S Atkin, professor of gastrointestinal epidemiology

Cancer Research UK Colorectal Cancer Unit, St Mark's Hospital, Harrow HA1 3UJ
(wendy.atkin@cancer.org.uk)


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