Cancer has affected Mr Hunt's family “very dramatically”. Photo: Kirsty O'Connor/HM Treasury.
Jeremy Hunt detailed his experience with skin cancer for the first time as he revealed that his brother now has the same disease.
The chancellor said he was lucky to have been diagnosed early and urged the UK to redouble its efforts in early diagnosis by leading the world in developing treatments.
Mr Hunt, 56, said last June that cancer was “incurable”. affected his family very dramatically” and that he himself had a “minor”. The following month, he took part in a three-mile race to raise money for Cancer Research UK.
His father, Sir Nicholas Hunt, Admiral of the Royal Navy, died of cancer at the age of 82 in 2013, and his mother, Lady Meriel, died last year at the age of 84.
In an interview with the Daily Mail on Sunday evening, he said that his 53-year-old brother Charlie had a Sarcoma was diagnosed in 2020, a rare and aggressive form of cancer that affects soft tissues. c.
Recalling his own diagnosis of basal cell carcinoma, a common type of skin cancer, Mr Hunt said: “I had a mole on my head that grew and grew. Eventually I was told that I needed to remove it.
“I was a cabinet minister at the time, not in my current job, but obviously this was the first time the S-word was used in reference to my own health, so that makes you sit down. But I have been blessed. It was not a life-threatening cancer and was discovered relatively early.”
He called his own treatment “excellent” but said the government should “continue to invest more” in addition to a 50 percent increase in oncology physicians since 2010.
“I know my family members well who have had a much harder time fighting cancer, and I know what families are going through across the country,” he added.
After leading the Department of Health between 2012 and 2018, Mr. Hunt was Chairman of the Commons Health and Welfare Committee until he was ranked 11th last year.
“From my time as Secretary of Health, I knew full well that half of us will get cancer in our lifetime, but it’s encouraging that this country is indeed one of the world’s leaders in cancer research,” he said.
“We're doing groundbreaking research here that could lift the curse of cancer on humanity in the future, so I fully support everything we can do to raise money to support more cancer research and raise awareness of what's possible.”
He emphasized the need to focus on early diagnosis, noting that this is one of the key priorities being addressed by Health Secretary Steve Barclay.
Mr Hunt noted that a stage 1 or 2 cancer diagnosis costs the NHS about half as much as a stage 3 or 4 cancer diagnosis and warned that the most dangerous cancers are cancers such as colon and prostate cancer, “when symptoms don't show until it's too late.”
While acknowledging there are regional disparities in the treatment of prostate cancer, the most common form of cancer in men, Mr Hunt said local gaps remain too large, but the health service ” tries very hard” to solve such problems.
It is estimated that one in two Britons will develop cancer in their lifetime, according to Cancer Research UK. Approximately 375,000 new cases are diagnosed in the UK every year, the equivalent of one disease every two minutes.
Cancer survival rates
Earlier this year, the NHS instructed hospitals to operate for 10 days for patients who received urgent referrals in an attempt to reduce the wait time for a cancer diagnosis.
As part of a long-term NHS plan introduced by Rishi Sunak last month, AI-assisted scanning will be used to accelerate the reduction of waiting times for cancer radiation therapy by allowing specialists to plan treatments about two and a half times faster than if they worked alone.
It looks like dozens of National Health Service (NHS) hospitals will be providing patients with innovative cancer vaccines in clinical trials over the next three months.
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