New Zealanders are dying while a 16-year "talkfest" continues about whether to screen for bowel cancer, according to a Canterbury surgeon.
3,000 New Zealanders are diagnosed with bowel cancer a year and 100 people each month - or 1200 people a year - die from it.
Patient and cancer groups say national screening is needed urgently and cancer experts, writing in the Medical Journal, are adding their backing, saying New Zealand has one of the world's highest rates of the cancer but has been one of the slowest to take the next step.
Christchurch colorectal surgeon Frank Frizelle agrees.
"The Government, through its various committees and feedback, has been talking about it for 16 years," Professor Frizelle said.
"The first report said we were short of colonoscopists. The latest report says we're short of colonoscopists.
"We can talk about it for another 16 years, and have another 16 years of deaths that are unnecessary."
Professor Frizelle edits the journal and wrote in it seven years ago that progress then on screening was "incredibly slow".
Since then a four-year pilot screening programme has begun at Waitemata in Auckland, with 129 bowel cancers diagnosed within the first year.
He said the programme's success came as no surprise but that screening must be made available to other New Zealanders too.
