April is Bowel Cancer Awareness Month

Every 15 minutes somebody is diagnosed with bowel cancer in the UK. It can affect anybody, regardless of their age or background. It's treatable and curable especially if diagnosed early, and nearly everyone survives if diagnosed at the earliest stage. However this drops significantly as the disease develops. More than 16,000 people die from bowel cancer in the UK every year – that's 44 people every day.

Our new survey results show that too many people remain unaware of the signs they could have bowel cancer. They show that around half of adults living in the UK (42%) are not aware of any symptoms of bowel cancer, despite it being the UK's second biggest cancer killer.

COVID-19 has sadly had a huge impact on bowel cancer services, which were already stretched before the crisis hit. The number of people referred, diagnosed and treated for the disease has gone down significantly because of the pandemic and this devastating effect is likely to take months or even years to recover.

We're all in this together, we hear you, we're listening and we will provide help and support for you at every step of the way.

This April, and now more than ever, we need to raise awareness of bowel cancer, the symptoms and help create a future where nobody dies of the disease. And we need your help to get the word out!