Work to promote additional intestinal screening

Opposition Vice President Tanya Plibersek said: "It is foolish to say that a relatively small number of people have been offered free screening for bowel cancer. which gives them the trouble of doing the simple home test.

The Labor Party has pledged an additional $ 10 million to raise testing rates, which would give citizens the best chance of surviving the disease, which kills more than 5,000 Australians each year.

"We desperately need to increase the number of people returning their gut cancer screening," she said.

"We see that just over 40% of the people eligible to do this free test do so and make it.

"It's really crazy because it literally saves lives."

Of the 3.2 million people who sent free bad cancer screening kits in 2015 and 2016, only 41% participated.

If this rate were increased to 60%, the survival rate for bowel cancer could be improved by almost 40%.

Plibersek said it would save thousands of lives.

The $ 10 million trade union pledge will allow the Jodi Lee Foundation, a charity against intestinal cancer, to conduct a national awareness campaign on the importance of screening and screening early second cancer in importance in Australian men and women.

The foundation's president, Nick Lee, said the campaign would use prominent 50-year-old Australians to encourage more people to take the test.

Mr. Lee said the big challenge was getting people to do the first test at age 50.

"With regard to bowel cancer, there seems to be a real reluctance to do a very simple test," he said.

"They think it's a little disgusting, but it's not really."