By Bill Heaney
Liz Hurley, the Hollywood actress and model, whose grandmother died of breast cancer, has been helping to raise awareness of the disease for decades.
And on Thursday members of the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood joined with her to draw attention to Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
The actor model, pictured right, said: “Certainly when the campaign was started 30 years ago there was virtually no awareness of breast cancer.
“The pink ribbon hadn’t been invented. October as Breast Cancer Awareness Month didn’t exist.”
During First Minister’s Questions at Holyrood, however, serious questions were asked about waiting times for breast reduction surgery.
“As part of this year’s £30 million additional investment to address backlogs, we have allocated funding to several health boards to treat patients who are awaiting risk-reducing mastectomy and immediate reconstruction.
“Building on that work, officials are now engaging with health boards to develop and progress the plan for patients with delayed reconstruction.”
She added: “She is languishing at the bottom of a waiting list because, shockingly, the resources to help her are still not available. However, when will she, and other women in that terrible position, receive that vital operation?”
Mr Swinney apologised, but said the explanation that he had given illustrates the challenges the government is faced with.
He added: “Clinical priority is driving attention to addressing patients who face trauma or active cancers. We are trying to make progress on the backlog of cases that emerged during the pandemic, which is the context for the case that Tess White raises.
“I cannot stand here and offer an instant solution—I am sorry about that—but I will give Tess White a commitment that the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care [Neil Gray] will engage constructively and actively with health boards to try to make more progress on the issue that she puts to me on behalf of her constituent.
“I hope that Ms White and her colleagues will understand that clinical priority is being attached to trying to save lives in the circumstances that we face. In that respect, progress has been made on cancer waiting times, but I know that that will be cold comfort to the constituent whose case Tess White fairly puts to me.”
Labour’s Carole Mochan told MSPs: “Given the story that we have just heard, and the fact that, since 2020, no data has been published on breast reconstruction waiting times following mastectomy, will the First Minister commit today to ensuring publication of good-quality data on such waits as soon as possible, so that we can properly see the relevant trends?”
Mr Swinney assured her: ““e are exploring issues on the quality of the data that we could publish. I say to Carole Mochan that I will take her question away and determine what information can be published. I do not have a solution to it today, because of the clinical priority that has been attached to treating cancer. I am very happy for us to be open about the challenges that we face, but we must do so on the basis of good-quality information.”
Later Liz Hurley told OK magazine: “When my grandmother was diagnosed in the early 90s she found her own lump and was mortified and embarrassed and didn’t tell anyone including her doctor for about a year by which time unfortunately it had spread. So that’s why this campaign was started to try and make breast cancer not something that was whispered but shouted about.”
“And yet despite all the publicity every October, 10 per cent of women never check their breasts and two in five rarely do.”
These women think it will never happen to them, but Hurley says that’s “a big risk”.
She added: “Unfortunately one in eight of us will get breast cancer in our lifetime. So it’s sort of playing the odds quite dramatically if you think you won’t be one of those eight.
“I think it’s probably better when you’re of the age to get screened, which is 50 plus in the UK, and I personally believe because I know so many women who found their own lumps in their own breasts when they’re younger, that I feel it would be good advice to check your breasts regularly.
“But I think knowing that mortality rates have dropped more than 42% since the late 80s is because treatments are better, treatments are targeted and most breast cancers are found earlier.”