The Press and Journal (Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire)
Cash issues for patients with cancer
Health: Ill people have to borrow from parents
Thousands of middle-aged people with cancer are forced to borrow money from their parents to cover their living costs during treatment.
Expenses such as hospital transport and loss of earnings typically amount to £570 a month, according to Macmillan Cancer Support. More than 30,000 cancer patients in their 40s and 50s have taken out loans from the “bank of mum and dad” and around 2,000 moved back in with their parents or in-laws to make ends meet, the charity has found.
Terry Whitewas, 56, almost lost his house and was forced to borrow £2,000 in addition to claiming benefits after he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Terry, from Nottinghamshire, said: “Life before cancer was comfortable. I’d worked hard and saved hard, but six months into an eight-month chemo regime, our savings had dwindled to nothing and our finances had spiralled out of control.
“I had to claim benefits for the first time with the threat of our home being repossessed hanging over us. It got so bad that I had to borrow £2,000 from my 78-year-old parents.”
Macmillan estimates that around 700,000 people with cancer of all ages are also vulnerable because they have no savings to fall back on.
Lynda Thomas, chief executive of Macmillan Cancer Support, said: “It is heartbreaking that people with cancer might have to go cap-in-hand to their elderly parents to ask for money, simply to keep a roof over their heads or put food on the table.”
She called on the UK Government, healthcare professionals, banks and insurance companies to do more to support people with the disease.
A government spok-esman said: “Cancer can affect all areas of a person’s life and we have worked closely with charities to ensure patients get all the support they need, including our benefits system.”
“Heartbreaking to go cap-inhand to parents”