May is bowel scan month and Rotary groups across the south west are encouraging individuals to purchase new self-test kits and hopefully save some lives.
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The new kits, costing $15, are ready for purchase from 10 pharmacies across Warrnambool and Koroit.
The kits are used every two years and include a self-addressed envelope for people to send a specimen directly to a pathology clinic in Melbourne for diagnosis.
Bowel scan project co-ordinator Rotarian Colinn Brinkmann is confident the kits will save lives.
“Last year there were 700 kits sold and 11 of those came back with a positive detection from within our postcode area,” he said.
“That’s one in 65.”
Social demographer Bernard Salt told The Standard this month that more than 30 per cent of the population would be at risk of bowel cancer by 2026.
He said this number will be more than 28,000 in the south-west.
Yet across the region less than 35 per cent of those at risk are conducting the test.
