NBC’s Andrea Mitchell reveals she has breast cancer—on live TV
The NBC chief foreign affairs correspondent used her announcement to support breast cancer awareness and encourage viewers to get screened. Watch the video.
On Wednesday, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell told viewers during a live broadcast on MSNBC: “I had planned to be hiking in Wyoming last week, but instead discovered that I am now among the one in eight women in this country—incredibly one in eight—who have had breast cancer.”
Mitchell said her cancer was caught during her annual screening in its “earliest stages” and that her “prognosis is ‘terrific.'”
During the announcement, Mitchell explained: “I’m looking at this as another of life’s lessons. For you women out there and the men who love you, screening matters. Do it. This disease can be completely curable if you find it at the right time.”
According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 202,964 women were diagnosed with breast cancer in the U.S. in 2007, the latest year for which statistics are available. It is the most common form of cancer to affect women of all races, and in 2007 it caused 40,598 deaths in the U.S. Other journalists who’ve fought breast cancer include “Good Morning America” anchor Robin Roberts and Hoda Kotb, anchor on “Today.”
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