MP who battled cancer to climb Kilimanjaro

Following her diagnosis, Tracey Crouch urged her Twitter followings to "check your bits and bobbins"

Former sports minister Tracey Crouch is to climb Mount Kilimanjaro to help raise funds for a breast cancer charity - two years after she ended her last radiotherapy treatment for the disease.

The Conservative MP for Chatham and Aylesford hopes to raise £100,000 to help Breast Cancer Kent buy lifesaving equipment.

Ms Crouch told BBC Radio Kent she was really excited about climbing Africa's highest mountain in July but said it would be "an enormous challenge".

"One of the things that cancer has done to me is stop putting things off that I want to do," the 47-year-old said.

Ms Crouch completed treatment for breast cancer in February 2021, and said she wanted to give something back to the charity that supported her.

Breast Cancer Kent hopes the money raised will allow it to buy a new radiography system which speeds up diagnosis times by processing biopsies at a faster rate.

Many people who attempt to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, in Tanzania, suffer with altitude sickness

On her fundraising page, Ms Crouch said Maidstone Hospital provided pathology services to a large part of Kent and was reliant on using imaging machines in other departments.

"This is significantly slowing down how fast they can process the tissue, which means patients are waiting longer for their results," she said.

Ms Crouch said the group of climbers that she would be joining to tackle the mountain would be out of their comfort zones. She said that although she had "spent a night in a tent", some climbers had never camped before.

However, Ms Crouch said she was "a pretty wild child" and was looking forward to seeing the amazing night sky on Kilimanjaro.