A Chislehurst woman, who lost six family members to cancer, is rallying voters to lobby their future MPs to commit to beating the disease sooner.

Penny Christophe, 25, is spearheading a campaign in the run up to the general election, which calls on the government to ensure earlier diagnosis and better treatment for cancer patients.

Cancer has claimed the lives of Ms Christophe’s uncle, two aunts, two grandparents and her 17-year-old cousin Georgie Pantzriarka.

She said: “Cancer has hit my family very hard. My poor dad lost his mum, his dad, his brother and his sister.

“And for me, the hardest thing was losing my cousin. He fought cancer all his life, after being diagnosed when he was two. He died four years ago.

“There is a genetic mutation in my family but we didn’t know that for years.

“We have since been tested and we are clear – but all the testing has had to be done privately which doesn’t seem right.

“A huge amount of progress has been made in research in the last decade – my best friend has recovered from testicular cancer. But so much more still needs to be done.”

Ms Christophe is urging voters to ask their MPs to put cancer at the top of their political agenda for Cancer Research UK’s Cross Cancer Out campaign.

The charity says survival rates are lagging behind other countries and nearly half of cancers are diagnosed at an advanced stage when they are harder to treat successfully.

Last month, Cancer Research UK released analysis to suggest one in two people in the UK will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives.

The estimate, using a new calculation method, replaced a forecast of more than one in three people developing the disease.

Lynn Daly, Cancer Research UK’s London spokeswoman, said: “We can’t avoid growing older, but we can prevent a crisis in the future by acting now to make our NHS cancer services among the best in the world.”

Anyone interested in supporting the campaign can email their election candidates here.

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