England to start national bowel cancer screening programme

A national screening programme for bowel cancer will be introduced in England from April 2006, the health secretary, John Reid, announced last week.

The government first announced its aim to introduce bowel cancer screening in the NHS plan in 2000. Pilots of a screening method based on looking for blood in stools then began in test sites in 2001, as a result of evidence that using this method could cut the death rate from bowel cancer by 15%. Two methods of screening were piloted—faecal occult blood testing, which looks …