Bowel cancer screening issues

Why bowel cancer screening is a needed health care investment is the most recent paper from the Menzies Centre for Health Policy. The authors, Sarah Wenham and Leslie Russell, point out that "This year 17,000 Australians will be diagnosed with bowel cancer, every week 80 people will die from this disease, and the cost of treatment will hit $1 billion. So it is shocking to realise that Australia’s nascent National Bowel Cancer Screening Program (NBCSP) has run out of funding and ground to a halt." They go on to point out that Australia's bowel cancer incidence is one of the highest in the world - surpassing the UK and the USA. They analyse the history of the NBCSP, look at programs in other countries and mount an argument for not only continued funding of the program, but a new commitment to it.