04 May 2018
April is Bowel Cancer Awareness Month (BCAM), a fantastic annual opportunity to raise awareness of bowel cancer and funds to support the charities fantastic work
This year Beating Bowel Cancer and Bowel Cancer UK have merged to form the UK’s leading bowel cancer charity, with a mission to ensure that by 2050, no-one will die of bowel cancer.
Bowel cancer is the UK’s second biggest cancer killer however it shouldn’t be because it is treatable and curable especially if diagnosed early. Nearly everyone diagnosed at the earliest stage will survive bowel cancer but this drops significantly as the disease develops.
How common is bowel cancer?
- Bowel cancer is the fourth most common cancer in the UK, after breast, prostate and lung cancers.
- Over 41,200 people are diagnosed with bowel cancer every year in the UK.
- More than nine out of ten new cases (94%) are diagnosed in people over the age of 50, and nearly six out of ten cases (59%) are diagnosed in people aged 70 or over. But bowel cancer can affect any age. More than 2,500 new cases are diagnosed each year in people under the age of 50.
- 1 in 14 men (7%) and 1 in 19 women (5%) will be diagnosed with bowel cancer during their lifetime.
How many people are living with bowel cancer?
- Around 268,000 people living in the UK today have been diagnosed with bowel cancer.
How many people survive bowel cancer?
- Bowel cancer is treatable and curable, especially if it’s diagnosed early.
- More than nine out of ten people diagnosed with stage 1 bowel cancer survive five years or more after diagnosis. However this drops significantly as the disease develops.
- There is only a small chance that bowel cancer will come back after five years.
- Almost 16,000 people die from bowel cancer in the UK every year. It is the second most common cause of cancer death in the UK, behind lung cancer. But the number of people dying of bowel cancer has been falling since the 1970s. This may be due to earlier diagnosis and better treatment.
Early diagnosis really does save lives that are why during April we’re raising awareness of bowel cancer symptoms. And you can help spread the word too.