Coming in the mail this spring for about 20,000 middle-aged Manitobans: free screening kits for colorectal cancer, considered to be the third most common cancer in Canada.

The simple screening kits come courtesy of the NDP government, which announced Monday it will start mailing them out to those between the ages of 50 and 74 living in Winnipeg and within the Assiniboine Regional Health Authority in southwestern Manitoba.

The screening kit consists of a fecal occult blood test, which can be done at home and mailed to a laboratory. The test checks for blood in the stool and may help identify polyps before they become cancerous.

"We believe by making this investment today that we'll be able to stem the tide," Health Minister Theresa Oswald said Monday.

Residents in those areas who do not receive a kit in the mail can contact their family doctors. Those who are notified of a positive test result will need to follow up with a doctor's appointment and a colonoscopy.

Oswald said she hopes the tests will prompt more people to find out if they have colorectal cancer, adding that 90 per cent of patients who have had it detected at the early stages can recover.

But cancer groups said they wished the screening program was available across the province, and not just in two regions. Groups such as the Colorectal Cancer Association of Canada also wondered Monday what took the Manitoba government so long to introduce a screening program.

On Jan. 23, the Ontario government launched a similar colorectal cancer screening program that aims to give home screening kits to 3.8 million people over the age of 50.

"The impact has certainly been that more people that got colorectal cancer and could have been prevented from getting that colorectal cancer missed that opportunity," association president Barry Stein said in Montreal.

According to the Canadian Cancer Society, 780 Manitobans were diagnosed with colorectal cancer last year, while about 350 died from it. Across Canada, about 20,000 new colorectal cancer cases are diagnosed a year, while around 8,500 Canadians will die from the disease every year.

Colorectal cancer is considered to be the third most common cancer in the country, behind breast and lung cancer in women and prostate and lung cancer in men.