KEY POINTS:
Health Minister David Cunliffe today appointed a six-member taskforce to advise on a programme to boost the battle against bowel cancer.
The first meeting of the taskforce will be on Thursday.
It will guide a pilot screening programme for bowel cancer planned to begin by the end of 2009, as part of rolling out a national screening programme from the end of 2011.
Randomised clinical trials have shown that a screening programme could save up to 100 lives a year, and the programme could reduce the death rate from bowel cancer by 10-15 per cent.
"This taskforce will oversee and support the work to achieve that goal," Mr Cunliffe said in a statement.
Members of the taskforce will also recommend ways to improve screening for "high-risk" groups, and to improve treatment and diagnostic services.
Men have a much higher likelihood than women of being diagnosed with bowel cancer and of dying from it.
The taskforce will be chaired by Shelley Campbell, chief executive of Waikato's primary health organisation (PHO).
Other taskforce members include:
* Middlemore Hospital gastroenterologist Dr Susan Parry, the clinical director of the NZ Familial Gastrointestinal Cancer Registry.
* GP and clinical director of Wanganui's PHO Dr John McMenamin.
* Charge nurse manager of Canterbury district health board's gastroenterology day unit, Teresa Lynch.
* A public health medicine specialist at Otago University, Dr Diana Sarfati.
* Deputy chairman of the Cancer Control Council, a radiation oncologist at Canterbury DHB, Chris Atkinson.
Dr John Childs, national clinical director of the Health Ministry's cancer programme, will also sit on the taskforce, which will have to make sure there is a workforce ready to begin the screening programme.
The Government is already funding district health boards for additional colonoscopy procedures and making sure there is additional training for colonoscopists.
Bowel cancer is the most common cancer in the country - about 2700 new cases of bowel cancer are diagnosed each year, and it kills about 1200 people a year - New Zealand has one of the highest bowel cancer death rates in the developed world.
Maori are less likely than other ethnic groups to be diagnosed with bowel cancer, but once diagnosed, are more likely to die from it than other patients.
In 2007 a national screening advisory committee urged caution because a bowel screening programme could overload the health system.
The pilot programme is likely to be in a population of at least 400,000 to provide 60,000 eligible people and proportionately high Maori and Pacific populations.
- NZPA
