Bowel Cancer UK is providing community pharmacies in Wales with a free bilingual toolkit to help them promote early diagnosis and encourage people to get screened for the disease.

The toolkit includes posters about the signs and symptoms of bowel cancer, shelf end information pads and pharmacy bag stickers with the words ‘Have you completed your bowel screening test?’

The kit also contains information leaflets about the disease and how to prevent it, a bowel screening demonstration test kit and a guide to speaking with patients about bowel health, bowel cancer and screening.

Bowel Cancer UK has also produced a free one-hour course for community pharmacy staff in the country to help them understand the symptoms of bowel cancer, what prevention advice they can give patients and how they can impress upon people the importance of screening. The course is available in English and Welsh.

“Pharmacies can play an essential role in supporting early diagnosis. At the forefront of healthcare and often the first port of call, pharmacy teams are ideally placed to raise awareness about bowel cancer, in particular the symptoms and the NHS Bowel Screening Programme,” said Sian Salkeld, Wales programme lead at Bowel Cancer UK.

“We’ve worked with community pharmacies to create a toolkit that provides staff with everything they need to help improve awareness of bowel cancer within their community.”

At least nine out of 10 people will survive bowel cancer if the disease is found and treated early, according to Public Health Wales.

In October last year, the Welsh government expanded home testing for bowel cancer to 55 to 57-year-olds as part of a £16 million investment to support the introduction the new faecal immunochemical home testing kits.