Government criticised for ‘pathetic’ bowel cancer screening response - The Front Page

Health Minister Simeon Brown. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Experts are calling the Government’s latest response to bowel cancer “pathetic”.

Health Minister Simeon Brown has announced the Government is lowering the screening from 60 to 58 for all Kiwis and canning plans to lower the age for Māori and Pacific men to 50.

The announcement has drawn the ire of those dedicated to fighting the disease, given on the 2023 campaign trail Prime Minister Christopher Luxon promised they would match Australia for bowel cancer screening protocol.

At the time, it would have seen the age lowered from 60 to 50, and 45 for some. Fast-forward and Australia has gone a step further and made it available to anyone from 40, following a discussion with a GP.

" Yeah I’d like to do that and we’ve also said we’d like to do it on breast cancer screening," Luxon said in a leader’s debate, " We have a 15% higher mortality rate on cancer than the equivalents in Australia do. And so we actually have to close that cancer gap big time."

University of Otago Professor of Colorectal Surgery Frank Frizelle told The Front Page about research that has found there’s been a significant increase in colorectal cancer diagnoses among people under 50 in New Zealand.

" New Zealand, Scotland and Sweden, all have different rates over the national total population. New Zealand decreasing, Scotland is the same, Sweden increasing. In those under 50, the increase is exactly the same [in all three countries].

" So something’s universally happening to young people, which is most likely an environmental thing because there’s no change in genes.

" There are a lot of possibilities, diets change and people eat more processed food. But a lot of things that we consider risk factors for what we call late onset normal bowel cancer.

" So we consider red meat, we consider smoking, we consider alcohol, lack of exercise and obesity. All issues in normal sporadic, late-onset bowel cancer. But in young people, we know that they drink less alcohol, they smoke less cigarettes, they eat less red meat, yet they’ve got this big increase," he said.

Health Minister Simeon Brown told Q&A the Government still wants to align with Australia and they’ll do it as quickly as they can.

But for now, lowering the age of screening to 58 for all Kiwis will “save more lives”.

Statistics show more Māori and Pacific peoples develop cancer earlier. For example, about 26% of bowel cancers in Pacific peoples occur between 50-59 years old, compared to about 11% in the non-Māori or Pacific population.

Hei Āhuru Mōwai chairman Nina Scott has labelled Brown’s decision institutionalised racism.

Brown puts the discrepancy down to lower screening rates.

He told Q&A the evidence and analysis given by the Ministry of Health is that the “age-related incidents are the same across different ethnicity groups”.

“If you look at the screening rates of non-Māori, European, about 60% of people participate in the process, that’s around 50% for Māori and I think lower for Pacifica communities.”

Frizelle told The Front Page he wants to see the Government keep its promise – but reckons it’s unlikely.

" There’s been a lot of promises and nondelivery on this ... As you probably are well aware, governments make lots of promises which they don’t deliver on," he said.

Bowel cancer is the second highest cause of cancer death in New Zealand. One in 10 Kiwis diagnosed are under 50 and every day around three die from bowel cancer.

Listen to the full episode to hear more about how bowel cancer is diagnosed in NZ.

The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am. The podcast is presented by Chelsea Daniels, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in world news and crime/justice reporting who joined NZME in 2016.

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