Thousands more people in Northern Ireland will be invited for potentially life-saving bowel cancer screening after Health Minister Robbie Butler announced a major expansion of the regional screening programme.
From November 2026, the Northern Ireland Bowel Cancer Screening Programme will begin extending invitations to people aged 59, with 58-year-olds joining the programme from April 2027. The phased rollout will continue until everyone aged 50 to 74 is eligible by 2031. The expansion is designed to detect bowel cancer earlier, improving treatment outcomes and helping to save lives.
Once fully implemented, the programme will invite an additional 135,000 people every year, increasing participation by around 80% compared with current screening levels. The phased rollout will ensure screening, diagnostic and treatment services can manage the increased demand while maintaining high standards of care.
Health Minister Robbie Butler commented: "Extending screening to people aged 50 to 59 will help identify more cancers at an earlier stage, when treatment is most effective. This investment will not only improve outcomes for patients but is also expected to deliver annual health service savings of between £1.7 million and £2 million once fully implemented.”
The UK National Screening Committee has recommended that bowel cancer screening should be offered to individuals aged 50 to 74 years of age, every two years, using a faecal immunochemical test (FIT).
Currently in Northern Ireland, bowel cancer screening is offered to individuals aged between 60 and 74 years old, every two years, using FIT. All bowel screening samples are processed and examined at a Laboratory based in the Northern Health and Social Care Trust.
Data collected from this important extension in the screening programme will also be used to inform future reductions to the threshold for the screening test (this is known as the screening FIT threshold). At present, the Northern Ireland Bowel Cancer Screening Programme uses a FIT threshold of 120 micrograms of blood per gram of faeces. By lowering the screening test threshold, the screening programme will in the future have the potential to detect even more abnormal growths that can develop into cancer and also to detect more cancers.