Early Edition with Kate Hawkesby

Leehane Stowers was just 35 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer and felt scared and in the dark as to what her best option was. "I had all these questions and was just being told no for everything, I didn't really have much understanding of what was going on." The Auckland woman, who is part Māori and part Samoan, is part of a group of people a new report shows are most at risk of dying from the cancer - the country's third most common. The research was included in a report from Te Rēhita Mate Ūtaetae - Breast Cancer Foundation National Register, titled 30,000 voices: Informing a better future for breast cancer in New Zealand and released today on World Cancer Day. The report, covering 30,000 patients diagnosed from 2003 to 2019, says despite significant improvements in overall survival rates, breast cancer remained deadlier for Māori, Pasifika, and younger women 10 years on from diagnosis. Pacific women are 52 per cent and Wāhine Māori 33 per cent more likely to die from breast cancer within 10 years t