MORE must be done to help reduce bowel cancer diagnosis waiting times, say a charity.

It comes following statistics published by NHS England last week, which show Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust had the second highest percentage of patients waiting more than six weeks for colonoscopy appointments in June in the Midlands and the East of England.

The trust, which runs the Alexandra Hospital, had 23 percent of its patients waiting more than six weeks for an appointment, with the target being less than one percent.

The trust was one of 17 across the area which breached waiting time for bowel cancer, with 63 hospitals in the region overall.

Asha Kaur, head of policy and campaigns at Bowel Cancer UK, said: “These waiting time figures present a worrying picture for patients and demonstrates the urgent need for the Government to make addressing this crisis a national priority.

"If hospitals are expected to meet waiting time targets then they must be given the resources and capacity to enable them to meet these standards.

"The Government must get to grips with tackling this problem.

"It is crucial urgent progress is made as increasing demand for services is putting hospitals under unprecedented pressure because they simply do not have the capacity to meet this demand.

“Rather than rhetoric, what we need is a comprehensive action plan to finally deal with this long-standing crisis in diagnostic services for bowel cancer."

The charity say 98 per cent of people will survive for five years or more if they are diagnosed at the first stage - but currently only 15 per cent actually are.

A spokesman for Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust said: "We are aware that our waiting times for endoscopy screening procedures are higher than we would wish to achieve as a trust.

"We have set in place an urgent programme to address the variation against national targets for waiting times.

"This includes the provision of additional clinical activities that we expect will significantly improve waiting times of patients living in Worcestershire.”