(Via TBNewswatch.com)

The Thunder Bay Regional Health Science Centre’s mobile cancer screening bus is hitting the road.

The Screen for Life Coach departs Thunder Bay on Thursday and spend most of the next seven months on the road, vising communities across Northwestern Ontario “anywhere between Manitouwadge and the Manitoba border,” said Caitlund Davidson, the hospital’s coordinator of prevention and screening.

“We are going on a seven-month tour so we won’t be back in Thunder Bay until November,” she said.” We will be circling through periodically for maintenance and for a couple of screening days here and there in town, but otherwise we’ll be out touring the region for seven months.”

The coach offers breast, cervical and colon cancer screening services to more than 75 locations in the region. Davidson said mammograms are available for people between the ages of 40 and 74 every two years, cervical screenings are available for those with a cervix between 25 and 69 if one has been sexually active, and colon cancer screenings are for those between 50 and 74 “if you are at average risk and have no family history of colon cancer.”

“Early detection is most important because we can treat cancers earlier when they’re found earlier,” Davidson said. “Cancer screening is for patients that have no symptoms, so if you do have symptoms, you would be referred to go to a walk-in clinic or to the emergency department nearest you.”

The screening coach’s first stop is in Dryden on Thursday afternoon in the community’s hospital’s parking lot, Davidson said, followed by Vermilion Bay and then on to Rainy River.

Dates and locations can be found on the health sciences centre’s website. Appointments can be booked by calling 807-684-7777, she said.

“I think we’re excited to be hitting the road,” Davidson said. “It’s going to be a great tour and just know that this is a comfortable, welcoming space, and we do have the same equipment that you would find in a hospital, so don’t be scared to give us a call.”