Earlier checks are vital says newsman
BBC TV news presenter George Alagiah says his cancer might have been spotted earlier and cured if he lived in Scotland.
Alagiah, who, was first diagnosed with stage-4 bowel cancer in 2014, underwent 17 rounds of chemotherapy and five operations and appeared to be in remission.
However, doctors told him it had returned just before Christmas.
The 62-year-old was speaking for the first time since being diagnosed with the disease for a second time.
Screening starts at 50 in Scotland – a decade earlier than in England, despite a sharp rise in cases for people in their 50s.
He said: “Just over five per cent of men beat stage-4 bowel cancer, but the survival rate is nearly 100 per cent if the disease is caught early. Had I been screened, I could have been picked up.
“Had they had screening at 50, like they do in Scotland, I would have been screened at least three times and possibly four by the time I was 58 and this would have been caught at the stage of a little polyp – snip, snip.
“We know that if you catch bowel cancer early, survival rates are tremendous. I have thought ‘Why have the Scots got it and we don’t?’”
Alagiah, who is backing the campaign by Bowel Cancer UK and Beating Bowel Cancer to lower the screening age to 50, said hearing the disease had come back was “almost worse than finding out in the first place”.
He said: “The first time you are just stunned and shocked. But somehow, when you think you have made it, the disappointment was pretty bad.”
The Sri Lankan-born newsreader has been married to wife Frances for 33 years. They have two children, Adam, 31 and Matt, 27.
He said: “I will not pretend it has been easy and we have had what we call our ‘wobbly moments’ and there have been a few of those and they hijack you at all sorts of times.
“We could be enjoying a nice walk and something will trigger this feeling. Those wobbly or darker moments are all to do with, for me, visualising my family without my presence.
“It is not ego, it is just that we are a unit. We love each other and I could break up that unit not through any fault of my own, and that is tough.”
Alagiah was told the news of the disease’s return just two hours before he was due to present the News At Six.
However, he still managed to go on screen and said that he “just went into autopilot”.
He recently finished a round of chemotherapy and is getting himself fit for surgery.
Professor Anne Mackie, of the UK National Screening Committee, said it was consulting on screening at an earlier age.