Time to test your bowels

Pharmacies are stocked with Bowelscan kits this May to help prevent bowel cancer in the community.

Nine thousand new bowel cancer cases affect men and women around Australia each year, with half of those diagnosed expected to die of the disease.

To give an early warning of the possible presence of bowel cancer, Rotary started its Bowelscan program in 1982.

The Busselton Geographe Bay Rotary Club is coordinating the distribution and collection of the $8 Bowelscan kits to pharmacists throughout the City of Busselton and the Shire of Capel.

Kits are now available at Terry White Pharmacy and Discount Drugstores in Busselton, as well as the Dunsborough Pharmacy and Capel Pharmacy.

Members of the public are encouraged to purchase a kit, provide a sample and return it to a participating chemist.

The sample will then be sent to a testing laboratory to analyse for the presence of blood, a possible indicator of bowel disease.