Bowel screening advocate’s message lives on after death
A stalwart of Palmerston North’s Fijian community, Maraia Statham, died suddenly at the end of last month, but her lifesaving message is still smiling on the city.
Known as Auntie Ma or Bubu Maraia, she is one of the poster faces of the year-old bowel screening programme in the Midcentral Health district.
Daughter Rebecca and son Anthony joined in the programme’s anniversary celebrations at Palmerston North Hospital last week, where her photo took pride of place.
Rebecca remembered her mother talking about an approach from cancer service equity and bi-cultural programme leader Lisa Te Paiho, looking for help to encourage more Pasifika people to take part in the programme.
She said it was typical of her mother to want to help, even though, at 76, she was outside the age range to benefit from bowel cancer screening.
She was happy for her well-known face to be used on a billboard with the simple question: ‘‘Have you done your test?’’
But she drew the line at having her face on social media or on the back of a bus.
‘‘She was not good at pushing herself forward,’’ Anthony said.
‘‘She would push someone out in front of her.’’
Anthony said his mum was always busy doing things for other people.
She helped children, she cooked for people, delivered meals, ran errands – much of her motivation fuelled from her Christian faith and church involvement.
Anthony and Rebecca said the family hardly knew half of what she did, and were overwhelmed by messages from people they barely knew since she had died suddenly and unexpectedly. Her death was not related to bowel cancer.
‘‘We want to see that poster stay up as long as they like. It’s an important message. She was quite passionate about it. That’s our way of giving back.’’
In its first year since the national screening programme was launched in Midcentral, it had sent at-home bowel screening test kits to 13,639 people aged between 60 and 74.
Of those, 7326 kits have been returned, with 391 positive results detecting traces of blood in the samples.
There have been 245 colonoscopies carried out, with more booked, and 15 cancers have been found.
Clinical nurse manager for the programme in Midcentral Anne Cleland said the scheme was on target to achieve participation rates of 60 per cent.
Māori and Pasifika people had been identified by the Health Ministry as priority groups, which was where Statham’s influence was so valuable.
Gastroenterologist Nick Tindle said many of the people with positive tests who had been referred for colonoscopies were found to have polyps growing in the bowel.
Polyps were largely benign, but could grow and develop cancer cells.
‘‘Generally, we remove all that we see.’’
The tissues were sent of for analysis and some were found to be cancerous.
But if the medical team was satisfied the margins around the cancer cells were wide enough and that the cells were well-contained no further treatment was needed, ‘‘and that is very pleasing’’, Tindle said.