While he had a lot of praise for the Government standing up and making change with yesterday's Cancer Action Plan, Blair Vining says the current changes still wouldn't have helped him.
Today, Mr Vining's calling for more bowel screening and more screening of younger people.
The 39-year-old Southland man, who has terminal cancer, petitioned for a national cancer agency. He and his family collected 140,000 signatures to petition for the agency, which was a Labour campaign promise at the last election and which National has also committed to.
The Government has announced its long-anticipated cancer plan but National has slammed it as "half baked".
The Government yesterday announced its long-anticipated Cancer Action Plan to help the on-average 66 New Zealanders diagnosed with cancer every day.
An extra $60 million of funding will be given to Pharmac to speed up decision making and help pay for a range of new drugs, including three proposed new cancer medicines.
A new Cancer Control Agency will also be established in December to provide centralised coordination of treatment, from prevention and diagnosis to palliative care.
But when asked by TVNZ1's Breakfast host John Campbell today what more he'd hoped for, Mr Vining said, "more bowel screening and to make it younger".
The Southland man, who has bowel cancer, wants the agency to oversee cancer care throughout the country.
"It's a lot cheaper to treat people than it is to carry them through to the end of their life. If they picked up on it with screening or any other systems they have out there, picked it up early, they'd save a lot more money than they do now by throwing money at the bottom of the hill where the ambulance is sitting there waiting."
Bowel cancer is a vicious form of cancer, but when caught early is has good treatment and response rates.
Sunday meets Blair Vining, who wants to help other Kiwis before he dies.
But even if the screening was implemented as the Government's intends, it still wouldn't have found Mr Vining's cancer.
"I've got a very, very rare mutation of cancer and it grows very, very quickly, and there's like seven mutations in the one cancer so that's why it grows so fast."
However, Mr Vining did praise bringing on Dr Diana Sarfati as the interim head of the national cancer agency.
"That really, really speaks good volumes of where they're headed because she's such a great lady and very passionate about it," he said.
Dr Diana Sarfati talked about her goals for her six-month tenure.
Ms Sarfati joined Breakfast later in the morning, talking about her goals for her six-month tenure.
Addressing inequity in cancer care through both location and ethnicity was a top priority, she said.
"I'm passionate about understanding why some groups do worse than others once they're diagnosed with cancer.
"Māori and Pacific tend to have poorer survival. So identifying the gaps in the system and making sure those gaps are filled."
She also said "prevention is key" and her other priorities were based on preventing cancer.
"It's a big job, it's a challenging job, and of course if you didn't think it was a big job you shouldn't be doing the job," she said. "But I'm really excited to get under way."
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