The Irish Cancer Society Research Department are pleased to announce that the April DECODING CANCER talk entitled:

'How to stack the odds against bowel cancer and save lives'

will take place at 6.15pm, on Tuesday, 11th April 2017 in the Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute, 152 - 160 Pearse Street, Dublin 2 (Next to Pearse DART station).

Each year more than 1,000 Irish people die from bowel cancer. Half of bowel cancers are preventable and, if caught early, 19 out of 20 patients can be cured but the number of patients surviving past 5 years is dramatically lowered if the disease is not caught before it progresses to a late stage.

In Ireland, we have a free national bowel screening programme targeted at age groups at the highest risk of bowel cancer, yet less than 4 in 10 of those eligible take up the offer of the screen.

Our Decoding Cancer talk will hear from Prof. Robert Steele from the University of Dundee, Scotland, a world recognised expert in the prevention, early detection and treatment of bowel cancer.

Prof. Steele will outline the factors which increase the risk of bowel cancer and discuss the devastating impact of this disease. He will then use evidence to ask whether we could do more to drastically reduce the number of people dying from this disease here in Ireland.

We will also hear from Ms. Deirdre Ryan, screening promotion manager at the National Screening service who will explain the national bowel cancer screening programme which is based on a modern, simple free test provided by the National Screening Service.

Deirdre Ryan is the Screening Promotion Manager with the National Screening Service (NSS). She manages a team of 5 Screening Promotion Officers whose remit is to work on strategies to increase uptake of the four screening programmes managed by the NSS – BreastCheck, CervicalCheck, Diabetic RetinaScreen and BowelScreen. Prior to this she has worked in a number of management roles in the HSE.

This event is FREE but registration is required.

This event will be streamed live on the Irish Cancer Society Facebook page.

For more information please contact researchevents@irishcancer.ie