Blue September is the Prostate Cancer Foundation’s biggest fundraising event for the year.
Blue September is the Prostate Cancer Foundation’s biggest fundraising event for the year.
The kaumatua of the Prostate Cancer Foundation, Dene Ainsworth, says tane Māori are waiting too late to get checked for the disease – meaning it’s more likely to be fatal.
It’s Blue September, the foundation’s biggest fundraising event for the year.
Ainsworth says Māori men are 20 per cent less likelyto be diagnosed with the disease than non-Maori and 50 per cent more likely to die from the disease once diagnosed.
“When you are late presenting the changes of a successful treatment programme are highly compromised, so it’s the old story – if we get in early and get early detection, our chances of a successful outcome are much, much greater,” he says.
Prostate Cancer Foundation kaumatua Dene Ainsworth
Ainsworth says men should ask their doctor to include a PSA test every time they get a blood test, which was a way to detect traces of the cancer earlier.
If Te Pāti Māori are part of the next government, they want to make access to cancer screening for Māori 10 years ahead of the rest of the population.
Māori diagnosed with cancer are more likely to die (and to die sooner) than non-Māori with cancer.
