There aren’t enough bowel cancer specialists in New Zealand, causing delays, an expert says.
Bowel Cancer NZ spokesperson Mary Bradley told TVNZ1's Breakfast there is a lack of investment from the Ministry of Health.
“We feel there is not enough bowel cancer specialists to be seeing the amount of people coming through and that is causing these huge delays.”
A patient's first port of call is their GP and she said it is important the GP gets the full story from them so they can be fast-tracked.
“The referral form is so important, if they are being referred to see a bowel cancer specialist, that form is what the specialist is seeing, how quickly they need to be seen.”
She said in the research they conducted a quarter of the participants were seen within two weeks, but the rest weren't being seen for up to 100 days.
Ms Bradley, who was diagnosed with the cancer in 2007, said GPs need to be putting more information on the referral forms.
“They need to be asking patients simple questions, do you have a family history of bowel cancer? ...doing a blood testing seeing if they’ve got anemia, anemia’s a very big symptom with bowel cancer. All of that paints a picture, all of that needs to go on the referral form and then an assessment can be made much better as to how quickly they’re seen.”
She said another reason why there are delays is there's a huge stigma around bowel cancer.
"People feel embarrassed to talk about it, people are too embarrassed to see their GP.
"A little bit of embarrassment is nothing if you're going to survive."
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