Publish date: 30 May 2022
A man from Cheshire is urging men to understand their risk of prostate cancer after a record number of people came forward for checks due to recent awareness campaigns.
Selwyn Sylvester was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2020 and backed the campaign for men to use an online tool to check their own risk of developing the disease.
Urgent referrals for urological cancers reached an all-time high in March this year, with almost 25,000 people (24,331) checked in just one month, with 2,663 in the North West, following a campaign launched by the NHS and Prostate Cancer UK in February.
The NHS teamed up with Prostate Cancer UK to deliver a six-week campaign from mid-February, urging men to use the charity’s online risk checker in a bid to reduce the shortfall in men starting prostate cancer treatment since the pandemic began.
Selwyn also championed a campaign in March by Cheshire & Merseyside Cancer Alliance, entitled Discuss Your Risk, to highlight that Black men are twice as likely to develop prostate cancer than the general population.
The Discuss Your Risk campaign promoted information and the use of Prostate Cancer UK’s risk checker tool, with 147 men in Cheshire and Merseyside using the tool in from mid-February to the end of March, the second highest total for regions in England.
For more on this story and to read an interview with Selwyn, see: