More Kiwis are able to access bowel screening earlier, with the starting age lowered from 60 to 58 across the central and lower North Island, Health Minister Simeon Brown says.

“This means thousands more people will have access to lifesaving screening, giving them the best chance of having bowel cancer detected early, when it can often be successfully treated,” Brown said.

About 40,000 additional people will become eligible in the first year, with the majority of newly eligible 58 and 59-year-olds to be invited for free bowel screening by April 2027.

“The programme is being expanded in stages to make sure services have the workforce and endoscopy capacity needed to safely support more people being screened,” Brown said.

Alongside the bowel screening expansion, the rollout of the Fit for Symptomatic pathway is continuing nationwide, with full implementation expected by the end of September.

“The Fit for Symptomatic pathway is a separate but critical part of our plan. It delivers two key benefits: helping detect bowel cancer earlier in people with symptoms, including those not eligible for routine screening, and making better use of colonoscopy services.”

The pathway gives people of any age with bowel cancer symptoms access to a simple, non-invasive test, similar to the one used in the national bowel screening programme. It uses a stool sample to check for traces of blood, an early warning sign of bowel cancer.

Rather than referring all symptomatic patients for colonoscopy, clinicians can use the Fit test as a triage tool to identify who needs urgent investigation and who does not.

To find out more about bowel screening in New Zealand, visit: www.healthnz.govt.nz/health-topics/keeping-healthy/cancer-screening/bowel-screening