Bowel Cancer Awareness Month

Discover how the Cancer Alliance is getting to the bottom of bowel cancer this April.

The giant inflata-bowel

Humber and North Yorkshire Cancer Alliance is taking its inflatable bowel – which is more than two metres tall and 3.5 metres long – to shopping centres and other community spaces to get people talking about bowel cancer.  

This is where the inflatable bowel will be heading to during April:  

 

The facts about bowel cancer

Bowel cancer is the third most common cancer in the UK. More than 16,800 people die from bowel cancer in the UK every year. It is the second biggest cancer killer in the UK but the number of people dying from the disease has been falling for several decades due to greater awareness. 

More than nine in 10 new cases (94%) are diagnosed in people over the age of 50. But bowel cancer can affect anyone of any age – more than 2,600 new cases are diagnosed in people under the age of 50 every year.   

Bowel cancer is treatable and curable especially if diagnosed early. Nearly everyone survives bowel cancer if diagnosed at the earliest stage. However, this drops significantly as the disease develops.  

The FIT screening kit

The best way to reduce your risk of bowel cancer is to complete a bowel screening test when invited to do so.

You use a home test kit, called a faecal immunochemical test (FIT), to collect a small sample of poo and send it to a laboratory. The sample is checked for blood, which can be a sign of polyps or bowel cancer. Polyps are growths in the bowel which may turn into cancer over time.  

If you receive a test through the post, it is important that you complete and return it. 

This year, the starting age to receive a FIT in the post has dropped from 54 to 50 across the region, and will soon become the national norm. People continue to receive the kits in the post every two years until they reach 74. 

Bowel cancer symptoms

Contact your GP if you are experiencing any of the following symptoms associated with bowel cancer.

  • changes in your poo, such as having softer poo, diarrhoea or constipation that is not usual for you  
  • needing to poo more or less often than usual for you
  • blood in your poo, which may look red or black  
  • bleeding from your bottom  

In this video, Mark Hughes, Clinical Director at Humber & Yorkshire Coast Bowel Cancer Screening Centre, goes into more detail about bowel cancer symptoms.

"I had no symptoms at all"

Gill Dickinson, 62, from Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, was 60 when found out she had bowel cancer. Had it not been for the FIT kit she received in the post, she might not have known she had bowel cancer until it was too late.   

Gill said: "I had no symptoms at all. So, I was shocked when the result came back abnormal, and I was then diagnosed with bowel cancer. It’s so worth those potential few minutes of embarrassment to take the test, believe me." 

"I'm still here!"

Michelle Bateman, 46, from Goole, East Riding of Yorkshire, is proof that bowel cancer can sometimes strike early.

"I was given a FIT kit to do by my GP, after a blood test meant further investigations. It detected bowel cancer, which of course was really scary when I found out, but I'm still here! I think we're lucky to get sent these in the post once we reach 50 – please, don't ignore it if you get one."

Cancer Champion sessions

The Cancer Champions programme will be running bite-sized bowel cancer sessions to raise awareness about bowel cancer, and what you can do to reduce the risk.

  • Tuesday 1 April at 12:00noon
  • Friday 4 April at 4:00pm
  • Monday 7 April at 10:00am
  • Thursday 10 April at 3:30pm
  • Thursday 17 April at 1:00pm
  • Wednesday 23 April at 9:30am
  • Wednesday 23 April at 7:00pm
  • Friday 25 April at 12.30pm
  • Wednesday 30 April at 11:00am

Use this link to find out more and book a place on a session that suits you.

Spread the word

Bowel cancer awareness will also be spread across the Cancer Alliance’s social media channels. Follow the Cancer Alliance on Facebook and X to help share the messages.

You can find contact information for support groups in our region for bowel cancer and other forms of cancer here.

There are other ways to help the Cancer Alliance, too. Complete our surveys on cancer experience of care, and attitudes to cancer.