regular prostate cancer blood tests<\/a> to catch the disease early, he said. <\/p>\n\u201cNot having visited a GP in 20 years is not a badge of honour.\u201d<\/p>\n
The projected surge in cases will threaten to overwhelm an already stretched healthcare system, worsening the problem, Duthie said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe question isn\u2019t whether we can afford to act \u2013 it\u2019s whether we can afford not to.\u201d<\/p>\n
Duthie said the Government needs to introduce a comprehensive nationwide response to combat the issue. <\/p>\n
Prostate Cancer Foundation NZ is advocating for a four-year pilot screening programme in two districts to detect medium and high-risk cases early. <\/p>\n
It would cost around $6.5 million over four years but could potentially return over $100m to the health system in cost savings, said the foundation.<\/p>\n
Over half a billion dollars in health gains could also be generated while $1m in personal income loss for working-age men could be avoided, it said. <\/p>\n
New Zealand First recently introduced a member\u2019s bill to establish a four-year pilot screening programme in one region in the North Island and another in the South Island.<\/p>\n
Foundation CEO Peter Dickens said the bill would allow New Zealand to join a European Union screening pilot involving 12 other countries. <\/p>\n
Taking part would allow New Zealand to learn lessons relevant to its population of at-risk men while also contributing to and learning from international knowledge, he said. <\/p>\n
Dickens called for all parties to support the bill. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe owe it to every man in New Zealand to take this issue seriously. If we can demonstrate this is truly an issue of national importance, then we can start having more open conversations about this devastating disease and the steps needed to address it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWe\u2019re asking patients to accept second-tier treatment options while watching their disease progress. \u201cThis creates an avoidable pathway…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30011,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[806,2534,2841,537,9060,29139,3528,8609,29140,6119,3273,42,527,20494,43,1536,1118,1523,29141,29138,6211,40,38,41,39,2766,26697,1455,2963],"class_list":["post-30010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-as","tag-cancer","tag-country","tag-crisis","tag-decades","tag-diagnoses","tag-doctors","tag-double","tag-doubling","tag-faces","tag-future","tag-headlines","tag-healthcare","tag-mounting","tag-news","tag-next","tag-of","tag-over","tag-projected","tag-prostate","tag-system","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-treatment","tag-warn","tag-warning","tag-zealands"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}