Bowel Screening Wales

Part of 2. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 2:37 pm on 25 April 2018.

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Photo of Vaughan Gething Vaughan Gething Labour 2:37, 25 April 2018

I recognise the issue that David Rees raises on both points, both about the fact that we don't currently offer the test for people who are in the age bracket between 50 and 59—. And, again, our ambition is clear: we want to be able to do that. But, actually, our challenge is that, when we're seeing a falling level of uptake in the screening for the current population we provide screening for, we need to understand better how to implement that more successfully as we then are ambitious to actually roll out to the younger age group as well, which is in line with the advice we've received. So, we have advice not to roll out for 75-year-olds and above. We do have advice that we need to get the position where, with a successful uptake, we then roll out to people over the age of 50 up to 59. 

On your second point about diagnostics, we've actually made significant progress on reducing diagnostic waits more generally, but it is recognised that, with the new test, we'll expect more demand. That's why health boards have been investing in endoscopy services over a number of years, and we're also expecting to see that the endoscopy implementation group will come up with more plans and proposals on improving both the efficiency and the quality and the capacity within those services—it's not just in this area, but on the greater diagnostic capacity.