By Bernie Riley
Growing up 250km north of Sydney, at Muswellbrook in the Hunter Valley, I learned early in life that being outside a major city was a major barrier to many things.
None more so than specialist care. Seeing my father battle prostate cancer and then losing him to more cancer remains the greatest tragedy and greatest lesson of my life so far, setting me on the path to where I am now, working for Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia to save lives.
As General Manager of Supportive Care Programs for PCFA, managing the Prostate Cancer Telenursing Service, it's impossible to ignore the stark disparities that afflict men in regional and rural areas.
Picture it. You're 600kms from the city, on a farm that has been your home for more years than you care to count, and then you get the news. Prostate cancer.
What do you do? You never planned for this, and the thought of lengthy treatment in the city is unbearable.
One in four men from remote areas call our Telenursing Service with severe distress, a fourfold increase compared to the numbers of severely distressed men who call from cities and regional centres.
Tragically, the statistics tell the story. Men in regional and remote areas have a 24 per cent higher risk of death from prostate cancer, on top of a 70 per cent increased risk of suicide death.
What the statistics don't tell you though is what these men go through. The uncertainty and doubt, the difficulty with accessing care, the financial hardship and potential of ruin if they are forced to let go of the farm.
A diagnosis of prostate cancer threatens everything these men live for, and many are tragically dying from nothing more than distance.
How should we address this? At PCFA, we're doing it every day, one call at a time.
Since launching the Telenursing Service a year ago, we've grown to around 300 calls per month, with over half of callers reporting moderate to severe levels of distress directly related to their diagnosis.
With the number of men diagnosed predicted to surge by more than 60 per cent in coming years, we must do more as a community, and as a country, to make sure all Aussie men get the care they need, whether they're on the farm, in the factory, or on the trading room floor.
Key to our success will be a review of the current Clinical Practice Guidelines for PSA Testing, so that we develop modern, easy-to-understand approaches to screening and early detection.
Equally, we need a doubling of funding for prostate cancer research, to an equivalent level seen for other major cancers.
And critically, we absolutely must do more to raise awareness and develop people-centred systems of care.
While we continue advocacy to put these measures in place, I'll be here answering the phones with my team, making sure all men have somewhere to turn when this bastard of a disease strikes.
Call us on 1800 22 00 99. We're here to help.
Bernard Riley
General Manager - Supportive Care Programs
