Bowel Cancer New Zealand says the delay in rolling out a nationwide screening programme has cost some Kiwis their lives.
Every day around three people die from the disease - but the rollout has taken five years to complete.
A 3cm tumour prompted Joy Shivas' bowel cancer diagnosis two years ago.
"I was thinking, really? I felt fine - there was nothing to indicate that I had bowel cancer."
It was only picked up because she was encouraged to take part in the bowel screening programme - "and there was the tumour - they saved my life".
From Friday, that screening programme is available across all DHBs nationwide.
"We're now screening literally hundreds of thousands of people a year… It's about trying to get to bowel cancers way earlier," Health Minister Andrew Little said.
But the rollout began region-by-region in 2017.
Bowel Cancer NZ spokeswoman Mary Bradley says the five-year delay to get it nationwide has cost some Kiwis their lives.
"A few months can take you from having a fighting chance, to losing your battle with bowel cancer," she said. "So five years, we would have saved so many more people if this had been around the country much earlier."
The Health Minister admits it's taken too long.
"If we ever do something like this again, it won't take five years," he said.
New Zealand has one of the highest rates of bowel cancer in the world, with more than 3000 cases every year. More than a third of those people will die from the disease - that's around three people every day.
The National Bowel Screening programme is available for people between the ages of 60 and 74. That age range has been expanded to 50, but only for Maori and Pasifika.
Spokesperson Mary Bradley says it needs to be dropped for everyone, otherwise hundreds of Kiwis will miss out.
"If it's not lowered down to 50, we know that lives will be lost to bowel cancer. They're being caught potentially, but they're getting caught too late."
University of Otago professor of surgery Frank Frizelle agrees, and warns bowel cancer is becoming more common for younger people.
"It's estimated that in 10 years time, one in four rectal cancers will be in those under 50."
That's a statistic Joy's relieved to be on the other side of.
