Cancer survivor launches petition to lower the bowel screening age
When Peter Marra was diagnosed with stage 3 bowel cancer, his doctor told him that if the finding had come any later the outcome could have been quite different.
‘‘I am fortunate to be alive,’’ Marra, 64, said. The New Plymouth man came round after a colonoscopy in early 2020 to be told he had cancer. Since then, he has undergone chemo and radiation, and now has a clean bill of health.
But it was what happened leading up to the procedure that has motivated Marra to set up a petition to get the age of bowel screening lowered to 45 – down from 60 where it sits at now.
Marra said he got ‘‘really mucked around’’ by Te Whatu Ora Taranaki, known then as the Taranaki District Health Board. ‘‘I was defecating blood.
‘‘The doctor put me on a waiting list for a colonoscopy. It took months and months and months. A doctor in Palmerston North, he said if it had been left any longer it would have gone to stage 4.’’
If bowel cancer is caught early, there is no need for chemo and radiation.
Marra began having symptoms when he returned home after living in Munich, Germany. ‘‘I was living in a first world health system. If I had a red flag, the doctor would send me to a specialist the same day. I was used to this system and I came back to New Zealand little knowing that the
Taranaki DHB had one of the longest waiting lists in New Zealand.’’
Getting a colonoscopy privately was expensive and not everybody had that kind of money, he said.
‘‘But once you get in the system, it is really good. They look after you really well. The staff at Taranaki DHB were great. It is really when you are outside the system you are stuffed.’’
Currently, the National Bowel Screening Programme (NBSP), which was launched Taranaki in August last year, sends out kits to people aged 60-74.
And from next year, the Ministry of Health will reduce the NBSP screening age from 60 years to 50 years for Māori and Pasifika.
But Marra wants the age dropped even further and for screening to be available to all people, given the country has one of the highest rates of bowel cancer in the world.
More than 3000 people are diagnosed with bowel cancer each year in New Zealand and more than 1200 will die from the disease.
Bowel cancer is the second-highest cause of cancer death in New Zealand, behind lung cancer, and more than 350 people aged under 50 are diagnosed
VANESSA LAURIE/ STUFF with bowel cancer each year.
Marra has a letter from Cancer Society of New Zealand chief executive Lucy Elwood supporting his petition and promising to let her communications team know. The petition closes on September 30.
‘‘My concern is from my experience of waiting for a colonoscopy,’’ Marra said. ‘‘A potential tumour can be growing while you are waiting. Or, if you have small growth, that delay could lead to death.’’
And there are numerous stories of younger people being diagnosed after waiting long periods of time to have procedures, like mother-of-two Jo Mckenzie-mclean, who is battling stage 4 bowel cancer after facing numerous battles to get life-saving tests, including colonoscopies.
Dr Tom Boswell, gastroenterologist and clinical lead for Te Whatu Ora Taranaki bowel screening programme, said the incidence of colorectal cancer in patients under the age of 50 years had increased by 2.9% over the past 10 years in New Zealand.
The increasing incidence of earlyonset bowel cancer was a worldwide phenomenon and the causes were not clear, he said.
GPS should refer patients with ‘‘red flag’’ symptoms to a specialist, he said.
The NBSP is for people without symptoms and in its first 12 months 12,700 kits were sent out to participants in Taranaki; 6900 kits were returned resulting in 18 cancers being detected, Boswell said.
‘‘Once you get in the system, it is really good.’’ Peter Marra Bowel cancer survivor