The Health Minister promises that the Government would be spending more than $4M for the next three years on the Colorectal Cancer Screening program. According to Eastern Health President and CEO Vickie Kaminski, this program will be inclusive of a home test which would be for the individuals who can give stool samples at their own homes.

The age group of men and women between 50 - 74 will be targeted first, then to other areas, and then the whole province. These people will be provided with a stool sample kit which will help them determine whether they can appear for colonoscopy test or not.

Eastern Health CEO Vickie Kaminski shared that the test is very easy and can be done at home; it has been dubbed Fecal Ocult Blood Test. By doing this they would be able to do better and quicker diagnosis tests.

According to Jerome Kennedy, Minister of Health, this type of cancer, that is colorectal cancer, is the third most common in the country. On Friday, at the news conference in St. Johns he also mentioned that the Government understands the importance of this program which helps people to detect all types of cancer, including colorectal cancer.

Annually it would cost $3M to operate this program.