Canines fighting cancer MELANIE'S HERO DOGS

The TV presenter has been busy behind the scenes working on a pet project

- Fleur Guthrie

In her work as a funeral celebrant, former TV presenter Melanie Kerr has lost count of how many families have told her their loved one died after a diagnosis of bowel or ovarian cancer “came too late”.

It’s why Melanie has teamed up with a groundbreaking charitable trust, K9 Medical Detection (K9MD), which is training eight canine “super-sniffers” for the early, non-invasive detection of cancer.

The Dunedin-based charity was founded in 2018 by Pauline Blomfield, a dog obedience trainer who wanted to harness the incredible innate sense of smell that dogs inhibit.

“Every single cancer has a different signature odour that comes from these volatile organic compounds,” explains Melanie, the charity’s ambassador. “So with dogs and science working together, each of our eight dogs are being trained to detect that specific scent for bowel, prostate and ovarian cancers.

“While humans have five million scent receptors in our noses, dogs have up to 300 million and can sense one to two parts of something per trillion. That’s equivalent to detecting one teaspoon of sugar in two Olympic-sized swimming pools of water. The aim is to develop a simple diagnostic test to detect cancer that will work alongside and add value to the existing screening programme. It’s not intended to replace anything.”