Few Australians aware of bowel cancer’s deadly impact
New Cancer Council research shows only around one in four Australians is aware that bowel cancer is one of the nation’s two biggest cancer killers.
Chair of Cancer Council Australia’s Bowel Cancer Screening Committee, Anita Tang, said the lack of awareness reported in a Galaxy survey commissioned by Cancer Council reflected alarmingly slow progress in population screening for bowel cancer.
She said that if the National Bowel Cancer Screening Program were fully funded and promoted, we would expect public awareness about the impact of bowel cancer to be much higher.
Ms Tang said it was unsurprising that the majority of people thought breast cancer was the nation’s biggest cancer killer. (It is fourth, after lung, bowel and prostate.)
The misconception was even more pronounced when it came to screening.
Twice as many Australians thought screening for breast cancer was recommended, compared with those who thought the same about bowel cancer – yet the benefits of screening for both in terms of potential lives saved were similar.
