The latest cancer incidence report has found that survival rates among cancer sufferers are improving. Incidence rates for all cancers for men and women combined dropped by 0.8% per year from 1999 through 2005, with the rates for men dropping at about three times the rate for women, according to the report released by the American Cancer Society, the National Cancer Institute, and other scientific groups. The incidence and cancer deaths fell for three most common cancers among men – lung, colorectal and prostate – and for breast and colorectal cancers in women.

Studies have shown that home screening for colorectal cancers could reduce deaths from the disease by catching it in the earliest stages, when the disease is often asymptomatic. Doctors say the cancer has a 90 percent cure rate when caught in the earliest stages.

The government of the Canadian province of Ontario – a region with one of the highest rates of colorectal cancers – recently began promoting home fecal occult tests, a screening tool that tests for blood in the stool. The test involves collecting a small stool sample on three different days, which is used to detect blood in the stool before it becomes visible to the eye. If the test is positive, the next step is a colonoscopy, a technique which is able to detect 90% of precancerous polyps 10 millimetres or larger.

A similar screening program introduced in parts of Great Briton has reduced the number of hospital admissions and deaths from the cancer by half within five years, researchers write in the British Medical Journal.

Colon cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer death in the United States and the third most common cancer in Canada behind breast and lung cancer in women and prostate and lung cancer in men. Cancer of the colon and rectum includes cancerous growths in the colon, rectum and appendix. The disease causes 655,000 deaths worldwide per year.