\n<\/p>\n
Cliff Richard has revealed he has been treated for prostate cancer for the past year. The 85-year-old singer said his cancer had \u201cgone at the moment\u201d and backed calls for a national screening test for men.<\/p>\n
In an interview with ITV\u2019s Good Morning Britain on Monday, he said: \u201cI don\u2019t know whether it\u2019s going to come back. We can\u2019t tell those sort of things but we need to, absolutely, I\u2019m convinced, get there, get tested, get checked.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said he was diagnosed after a health check for his insurance ahead of a concert tour of Australia and New Zealand.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe good fortune was that it was not very old, and the other thing is that it has not metastasised. Nothing had moved into bones or anything like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The singer, known for decades of hits including The Young Ones, We Don\u2019t Talk Anymore and Summer Holiday, described the lack of a national screening programme as \u201cabsolutely ridiculous\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have governments to look after our country and those who live in that country, so I can\u2019t see how you can say, \u2018Oh we can do this, we can do that, but we don\u2019t do this for these people,\u2019\u201d Richard said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all deserve to have the same ability to have a test and then start treatments really early. It seems to me \u2013 I\u2019ve only been for one year now in touch with cancer, but every time I\u2019ve talked with anybody this has come up and so I think our government must listen to us.\u201d<\/p>\n
The king last week said his cancer treatment would be reduced in the new year, and Richard said he was keen to join forces to raise awareness.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been involved with many charities over the years and if the king is happy to front it for us, I\u2019m sure loads of people, I certainly would join him.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the king is listening, I think most of us would say, \u2018Yeah, we\u2019re available.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Richard was interviewed by the former Sky News presenter Dermot Murnaghan, who announced his diagnosis with stage four prostate cancer in June.<\/p>\n
Afterwards Murnaghan, 67, spoke to GMB presenters Susanna Reid and Richard Madeley about his own diagnosis and encouraged men to get themselves tested.
He said: \u201cI was ill. I fell ill. I\u2019m stage 4, so I was on a long holiday far away from these shores, and felt awful and put it down to jet lag or an infection \u2026 rapidly understood that I was really bad, and flew back here and went straight into A&E, straight into a hospital bed.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo that\u2019s how silly I was, that if I had a test, I don\u2019t know however many years, how long it had been developing within me, but if I\u2019d had a test earlier, then, you know, the earlier you catch it, it goes for most cancers, the earlier you catch it, the better the treatment is, or the better the prognosis.\u201d<\/p>\n
In November, Murnaghan expressed his disappointment when the UK National Screening Committee (UKNSC) said prostate cancer screening should not be made routinely available for the vast majority of men in the UK because it \u201cis likely to cause more harm than good\u201d.<\/p>\n
The committee has, however, put forward a recommendation to screen men with BRCA1 and BRCA2 genetic mutations, which puts them at far higher risk of prostate cancer, every two years, between the ages of 45 and 61.<\/p>\n
Chiara De Biase, director of health services, equity and improvement at Prostate Cancer UK, said: \u201cWe\u2019re glad to hear that Sir Cliff Richard found his prostate cancer at an early stage and has had successful treatment.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe thank him for sharing his story and in doing so raising vital awareness of this disease, which is completely curable if found early. But men\u2019s lives should not be left to chance. We lose 12,000 dads, brothers, sons and friends to this disease every year.<\/p>\n
\u201cProstate cancer is the last major cancer without a mass screening programme, and it\u2019s about time for change.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Cliff Richard has revealed he has been treated for prostate cancer for the past year. The 85-year-old singer said his cancer had \u201cgone at the moment\u201d and backed calls for a national screening test for men. In an interview with ITV\u2019s Good Morning Britain on Monday, he said: \u201cI don\u2019t know whether it\u2019s going to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37485,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[1348,634,654,16835,1821,572,697,201,2384,20719],"class_list":{"0":"post-37484","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-backs","9":"tag-call","10":"tag-cancer","11":"tag-cliff","12":"tag-prostate","13":"tag-reveals","14":"tag-richard","15":"tag-screening","16":"tag-treatment","17":"tag-yearlong"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}