The Health Ministry is drawing up proposals for cervical and colorectal screening programmes following the success of the breast cancer screening centre, according to ministry sources.

The ministry is studying the feasibility of these two screening programmes and the way they should be carried out. However, no information was given with regard to the timeline of the proposals.

A screening programme tests for potential cancers in people who have no symptoms of cancer. It allows detection of early stage cancers, sometimes even before lesions turn cancerous. Tracing a cancer earlier will make treatment more effective, less invasive, and in some cases, even cure patients.

Gastroenterology specialist Pierre Ellul, who took part in the UK screening programme, told The Sunday Times there is a desperate need for colon cancer screening.

According to Dr Ellul, a screening programme would prevent colon cancer, as it not only picks up cancerous growths, but also detects polyps before they turn into a cancer.

This, he said, was ideal as it would mean reducing morbidity and mortality, with more growths caught early enough to be removed through an endoscopy, as a day procedure, without surgery.

In Malta, approximately 180 new cases of colon cancer are detected per year. According to Dr Ellul, it is the more advanced cancers that are picked up in Malta. With a screening programme, he said, they would be able to detect more cancers at an earlier stage.

For cervical cancer, however, a need for a screening programme was not so pressing, according to consultant gynaecologist, Charles Savona Ventura, who is head of the University Gynaecology Department.

“We already have smear tests carried out in the polyclinics,” he said, suggesting that perhaps an official programme would be more organised and would call on people to have a cervical smear test, which would detect cancerous and pre-cancerous lesions.

The two programmes being considered are in line with the EU Council Recommendation on Cancer Screening of 2003, which suggests a pap smear for cervical cancer for women between 20 and 30 year, and a faecal occult blood test for ­colorectal cancer in men and women aged 50 to 74.

An estimated 1.58 million new cancer cases (excluding non-melanoma skin cancer) occurred in the EU in 1998.

Of these, 1.4 per cent were cervical cancers, 13 per cent breast cancers, 14 per cent colorectal cancers and nine per cent prostate cancers. Cervical and breast cancer constituted three per cent and 29 per cent respectively of new cancers in women. Prostate cancer constituted 17 per cent of new cancers in men.

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