Pharmacy Daily | ‘Don’t be a fool’ campaign

Community pharmacies are being encouraged to play a key role in community-based bowel cancer screening programs in light of research that suggests they are currently missing out on a major commercial and public health opportunity. Professor Peter Carroll will present at the upcoming APP conference in Queensland and outline a strategy for turning bowel cancer screening into a professional and rewarding category for pharmacists. Last week Bowel Cancer Australia and Let’s Beat Bowel Cancer launched their “Don’t be a fool, test your stool” campaign. Supporting materials have already been distributed to pharmacists nationally to encourage them to promote faecal immunochemical tests via their pharmacies. “This is exactly the kind of campaign that pharmacists should be supporting,” said Carroll. “There are about 7 million Australians aged 50 years and over and official guidelines suggest they should be screened for bowel cancer at least every two years. “There will be ads and PR driving consumer awareness and community pharmacists are uniquely positioned to help their customers to get screened” The call for pharmacists to support the campaign has coincided with the publication of a new meta-analysis last week that shows faecal immunochemical tests (FIT) are “highly specific and have high overall diagnostic accuracy for detecting colorectal cancer.” To order kits call Clinical Genomics on free call 1800 556 575.

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