July 24th 2023.
Jeremy Hunt has seen first-hand how cancer has impacted his family after both his parents and his brother were diagnosed with the disease. His brother Charlie was diagnosed with sarcoma in 2020, and he himself was treated for skin cancer.
To raise money for Sarcoma UK and the Royal Surrey Cancer and Surgical Innovation Centre, Jeremy and Charlie Hunt ran the London Marathon together in October of last year. Jeremy said that, although he was lucky that his cancer was caught early, not everyone is so fortunate.
He said: “My treatment was superb, but I know more and more of us are getting cancer so that’s why we need to continue to invest more. One of the things we need to focus on is early diagnosis because if you pick up cancers early, it’s much more likely that you’ll completely cure someone. It’s about half the cost for the NHS if you pick up cancer at stage one or two rather than three and four so that’s why diagnostic centres are very important.”
Jeremy believes that raising awareness of cancer symptoms is key to improving early diagnosis rates. He said: “You’re more likely to find a lump in your breast then you are the symptoms of prostate cancer and bowel cancer or oesophageal cancer. That’s why they can often be so dangerous. Obviously I’m very aware from my time as health secretary that half of us will get cancer in our lifetimes, but the encouraging thing is this country really is one of the global leaders when it comes to cancer research. We are doing some groundbreaking research here which could lift the curse of cancer from humanity in the future, which is why I’m all in favour of anything we can possibly do to raise money to support more research into cancer and raise awareness of what’s possible.”
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