'Three in ten Canarians bin the screening letter': oncologist Pedro Lara in Uga

A letter arrives from the public health service with a test to do at home. One in three Canarians ignores it. That is the figure Dr Pedro Lara — oncologist, director of the Canary Institute for Cancer Research and president of the Spanish Association Against Cancer in Las Palmas — brought to Uga on Friday, at the invitation of Yaiza council.

How the screening works

The programme looks for hidden blood in stool samples: a test done at home and handed back. It comes back positive in 5 per cent of cases, and then a colonoscopy follows. "They may be just polyps, which are removed and that is that, with a check every two years," Lara explained, "but they can also be malignant tumours, and then you have to act at once."

That is the whole point: bowel cancer caught while still localised is a different disease from the same tumour found once it has spread. Risk rises after fifty — the age at which the letter arrives.

The Canary figures

Projections point to 13,000 people diagnosed with cancer across the islands this year. Bowel, breast and prostate are the three most common.

The session was organised by the social services department, led by César Rijo, with the Adsis Foundation, as part of the health ministry's coordination board.