The one thing you must discuss with your dad on Father's Day
On Father's Day, many of us will call our Dads for a chat. We'll discuss many things: the news, sport, the family. But few of us will touch on our health. For we men aren't very good at addressing that: I am the son of a GP but even my dad and I don't talk enough about health. In fact he's had a prostate cancer test, but it took him a while to get around to it. It's not that the topic is taboo, more that it never seems quite the right moment to ask a delicate question.
But talking about health with your dad, and particularly the misconceptions around prostate cancer, could save their life. It is one of the best things you could do this Father's Day, and a true act of love.
I have been an ambassador for Prostate Cancer Research for three months now, and what has really struck me in this time is how alien it is for men to proactively ask to be checked for a disease. Our assumption is that if everything is working fine, it is fine.
I've been talking to men about the disease in Yorkshire, in London, in Southampton and it's worrying how many misconceptions there are about Britain's most common cancer. When I raise prostate cancer and the need to get checked, men regularly tell me that everything is functioning down there, so they don't need a test. But that is not right: and this confusion is costing lives.
An Ipsos poll found that just 7 per cent of people know that prostate cancer – which one in eight men will be diagnosed with during their lifetime – is symptomless in the early stages. If you wait to take action until you are in pain, there's blood in your urine or you are having trouble peeing, you will have left it dangerously late. The cancer will almost certainly be advanced at this point, and treatment far less certain to succeed.
This ignorance is costing lives. It is why we need a targeted national screening programme to make sure that the right men are being checked at the right time for the disease. If we can make this happen, we can save thousands of lives.
So, this Father's Day, talk through with your dad the risk factors for prostate cancer. Does he have a close relative who has had the disease? If so, he's more at risk and should make getting checked a priority. Are you black? If so, your risk is significantly higher – one in four black men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer.
The benefit of getting checked is that if the disease is caught early, it can be treated relatively easily and with a high success rate. But if it is caught after the cancer has spread then that makes treatment far harder and is bad news for survival chances. Once the cancer has spread, the success rate of treatment is below 50 per cent.
Thanks to the work of charities such as Prostate Cancer Research and the bravery of individuals hit by the diseases who have spoken out about the need to get checked, people are far more aware of prostate cancer than they were. I know my friend President Biden's fight against the disease will raise awareness too. I also salute the thousands who will join the March for Men in Battersea Park today.
But despite all this work, too few people know that prostate cancer is generally symptomless in the early stages. I've even heard from consultants treating patients who were initially denied a PSA screening test on the basis that they had no symptoms.
The National Screening Committee will decide later this year whether to introduce a targeted national screening programme. I would urge them to commit to this without delay. It is a move that will save lives and with the number of prostate cancer cases having increased by 25 per cent in the past five years, the problem is too urgent to wait any longer. We need a screening programme for the UK's most common cancer now.
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