Jeremy Hunt has discussed in detail his experiences of skin cancer for the first time, as he revealed that his brother now has the same disease.
The Chancellor said he was “blessed” to have been diagnosed early and called on the UK to redouble its early diagnosis efforts while leading the world in developing treatments.
Mr Hunt, 56, revealed last year that cancer “touched his family very dramatically” and he had “a minor one” himself. He went on to participate in a three-mile race the following month to raise money for Cancer Research UK.
His father, Sir Nicholas Hunt, who was an admiral in the Royal Navy, died of cancer aged 82 in 2013 and Lady Meriel, his mother, died last year aged 84.
In an interview with the Daily Mail on Sunday night, he said his sibling Charlie, aged 53, was diagnosed with sarcoma – a rare and aggressive cancer affecting soft tissue – in 2020, and while he is “doing ok” it has had “life-changing” impacts.
Recalling his own diagnosis of basal cell carcinoma, a common type of skin cancer, Mr Hunt said: “I had a mole in my head that just grew and grew. Eventually, I was told I needed to have it removed.
“I was a cabinet minister at the time, not in my current job, but it was obviously the first time that the ‘C word’ had been used in terms of my own health so that makes you sit up. But I was blessed. It was not a life-threatening cancer and it was caught relatively early.”
He described his own treatment as “superb” but said the Government must “continue to invest more” on top of a 50 per cent increase in cancer doctors since 2010.
“I am very aware of members of my own family who have had much tougher battles against cancer, and I know that’s what families are going through up and down the country,” he added.
After running the Department for Health between 2012 and 2018, Mr Hunt was the chairman of the Commons health and social care select committee until entering No 11 last year.
“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,” he said.
“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.”
He stressed the need to focus on early diagnosis, pointing out that it is one of the key priorities being pursued by Steve Barclay, the Health Secretary.
Mr Hunt noted that diagnosing cancers at stage one or stage two comes at about half the cost to the NHS than diagnosis at stage three or stage four, and warned that the most dangerous cancers are those such as bowel and prostate cancer “where the symptoms don’t manifest themselves until it’s too late”.
Acknowledging a postcode lottery in prostate cancer, the most common form of cancer in men, Mr Hunt said regional disparities remained too great but the health service “tries really hard” to deal with such issues.
One in two Britons are estimated to get cancer in their lifetimes, according to Cancer Research UK. Around 375,000 new cases of the disease are diagnosed in the UK every year, the equivalent to one every two minutes.
