Dig deep and help save lives

IT takes a lot of guts to undergo a colonoscopy to check for cancers.

But that’s what a group of Far Northern media representatives from the Cairns Post, ABC, 4CA and Star 102.7 are doing to highlight a new campaign to raise more than $400,000 for lifesaving equipment at Cairns Hospital.

Four men will undergo colonoscopies to launch the $409,000 campaign for the Far North Queensland Hospital Foundation.

The ‘Show us ya guts’ campaign follows a call for specialised equipment from Cairns Hospital’s endoscopy team.

The equipment includes $98,000 for oesophageal manometry (measuring waves) and pH studies, two balloon enteroscopes at a cost of $120,000 and Olympus radial and linear probes at a total cost of $190,000.

The equipment sought will be for the diagnosis and treatment of small bowel, pancreas, bile duct, oesophagus, stomach and oesophagus ulcers, polyps and tumours.

Cairns will only be the second hospital to provide the service in Queensland and will lift the endoscopy unit to tertiary status.

The unit is one of the best in the state, with one of only five nurse endoscopists in the state, and a group of specialists, including Dr Mohd Kahn, previously a director of a hospital in Saudi Arabia, and an expert in the field of oesophageal manometry.

The equipment is vital for the early detection of bowel cancer, a major killer in the Far North.

So dig deep and give generously. Nick Dalton Deputy editor