Write to your MP for METUPUK

Dear (your local MP)

As a constituent who has been affected by breast cancer, I wanted to ask for your help with raising awareness of secondary breast cancer (also known as metastatic breast cancer) during Breast Cancer Awareness month.

Around 55,000 women and 380 men are diagnosed every year with breast cancer in the UK and 11,500 die annually. It’s the biggest cancer killer of women under the age of 50. We are behind other European countries on survival rates. The median life expectancy of someone with secondary breast cancer is 2-5 years, but some live longer and there is the potential for this to be extended with investment in research, drug access and care pathway.

For years, the focus of Breast Cancer Awareness Month has been on primary breast cancer, but what about those with incurable secondary breast cancer? We know around 30% of primary breast cancers will develop into secondary breast cancer.

We have some simple requests that we believe can transform this situation. I would be extremely grateful for your support in these matters:

• We urgently need data.  A national secondary breast cancer audit has been called for over many years and is an easy win to help transform outcomes. NHS England has announced it will fund an audit, but this process is likely to take many years. This must be accelerated as a matter of urgency.
• The UK cancer crisis is already critical, with an ever-increasing treatment and care backlog, so it is imperative to address this to ensure the Cancer Alliances prioritise secondary breast cancer so that patients receive personalised support and treatment. This requires designated secondary breast cancer leads in every Cancer Alliance to support the workforce recovery plan.

We believe international collaboration in life science and drug access can help accelerate action on secondary breast cancer –to turn this from a terminal to a long-term condition.

We urgently need new MP champions to add the secondary breast cancer voice to calls to rebuild cancer services.  I urge you to add your support to the campaign ‘The Darker Side of Pink’ launched this month by METUPUK – the country’s only patient advocacy group dedicated to Metastatic Breast Cancer, which kills 31 women in the UK every day. Please see #DarkerPink, watch the videos and share on social media using the hashtag #DarkerPink.

This would mean so much to me and the thousands of women and men who are invisible and living with secondary breast cancer in the UK. 

We need to stop people from dying from secondary breast cancer-time is of the essence.

Yours Sincerely,