May’s hug for cancer stricken Tessa Jowell
THEY have fought on opposing sides for more than 20 years.
But yesterday Theresa May and Tessa Jowell put their political differences aside to share an emotional embrace as they unveiled a £ 45million boost for brain tumour research.
The Prime Minister hugged the Labour peer as the Government and Cancer Research UK announced the funding for the disease Baroness Jowell was diagnosed with last year.
Brain tumours are the biggest cancer killer of children and young people.
One in three patients visit a medical professional more than five times before they are diagnosed.
Survival rates are also poor – 60 per cent of people diagnosed with a high-grade brain tumour will die within one year and just 19 per cent will survive for five years or more.
The Government announced £20million in funding for brain tumour research over the next five years, on top of £25million from Cancer Research UK. This will support two new specialist centres where experts will work on treatments for children. A centre focusing on adult brain tumours is due to open later this year.
After yesterday’s meeting, Mrs May wrote on Twitter that the funding would help ‘tackle a disease where survival remains woefully low’. She added that Baroness Jowell ‘truly is an inspiration to us all’. Last month Baroness Jowell, who was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour last May, received a standing ovation from MPs after a plea for more cancer treatments to be made available through the NHS.
Yesterday Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said the new funding was ‘a chance to create a genuine step change in survival rates for one of the deadliest forms of cancer’.
He added: ‘There are areas where we can undoubtedly do better. One is prostate cancer, which the Daily Mail is rightly campaigning on.’ The Mail has called for increased funding to combat the disease, which is now a bigger killer than breast cancer.