March is Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month, where screening is urged for people over 50 years old and the Timmins and District Hospital is busy providing a unique self-referred screening service every Friday. 

The tool that is used in colorectal screening is a flexible sigmoidoscopy, which is a scope with a camera on the end of it, that scans the inside the large intestine and colon.  TDH is the only health centre in the north that has one.

Carolyn Dean is a Registered Nurse that works in the screening clinic.

“In the sigmoidoscopy clinic, we look at the first third of the colon.  The scope actually takes high definition video and pictures as we go along." said Dean.

The nurses performing this procedure are specially trained, having been to the Michener Institute in Toronto for instruction.

"We are on the hunt for those polyps. They are our enemy and we know that we can stop colon cancer in its tracks, just by removing these polyps, because they have the seeds of what a cancer can grow from." said Dean.

Officials say 73 Canadians are diagnosed every day with colorectal cancer and 26 die from it every day. 

They say a twenty-minute appointment at the screening clinic could be life-saving.

"What we're trying to do is get the people in at an early stage, to catch things when they're small, because if one of those polyps wants to go bad in your colon, it would take ten years for that to develop into a full-grown cancer.  So, as you can see, this is a slow-progressing type of cancer." said Program Coordinator Sue McArthur.

The hospital wants the public to be more aware of the deadly disease and to realize the screening process is not as bad as one would think. 

An information booth will be set up in the main promenade of the hospital at the end of March to answer questions about colorectal cancer and services provided there.

The nurses say flexible sigmoidoscopy is less invasive, does not require sedation, can be self-referred and is only required every ten years.