Two lung cancers. One breast cancer. Two prostate cancers. Four brain tumours. All caught in a single year of preventive scans at London’s Echelon Health, all in clients who had arrived believing themselves entirely well. In a region where cancer presents a decade earlier than in the West and Dubai has now made longevity a national priority, the case for looking now has never been sharper.

They walked into the clinic believing themselves well. Two of them left with a diagnosis of lung cancer, both caught at a stage where surgical cure remains highly likely. One woman with breast cancer. Two men over 50 with prostate cancer. Four with brain tumours. Thyroid cancer was identified in one in every 40 clients scanned. And in one man, an acute stroke was in progress at the moment his scan was taken; he was in emergency treatment within the hour.

The findings appear in the 2025 clinical outcomes audit of Echelon Health, the Harley Street preventive-health provider founded by Dr Paul Jenkins MA MD FRCP, the Cambridge-trained endocrinologist and author of more than 80 peer-reviewed scientific papers on hormones and cancer. Released this August ahead of October’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month and November’s men’s-health campaigns, the audit reviewed 416 preventive assessments carried out across the calendar year.

“If you wait for lung cancer to be visible on a chest X-ray, your five-year survival rate is around five per cent,” says Dr Jenkins. “Detected at two or three millimetres, using a low dose CT scanner, that same survival rate is above ninety per cent.” The two lung cancers documented in the audit were both identified through follow-up scanning of small nodules picked up at earlier assessments.

The same pattern of advanced disease in patients without symptoms extended beyond cancer. In one 46-year-old client with no symptoms and on no medications, blockages of more than 90 per cent were found in all three of his main coronary arteries. Two years earlier, after an exercise treadmill test, a cardiologist had reassured him all was well. He was in bypass surgery within days.

In the UAE, breast cancer is diagnosed at a median age of 48, a decade earlier than in the West. More than 55 per cent of cases are in women under 50. Around 45 per cent of all UAE cancer diagnoses occur in adults aged 20 to 49. In Saudi Arabia, more than half of breast cancer cases are picked up at Stage II or Stage III. The screening thresholds designed for Western populations do not fit a region where cancer is arriving ten years earlier.

“Putting one’s head in the sand and hoping for the best will not make a cancer disappear. It will simply allow it to grow and spread, first to the local lymph nodes and then into the bloodstream. Once that happens, we are almost invariably looking at an incurable situation.” Dr Paul Jenkins, Founder and Medical Director, Echelon Health

Alongside Echelon’s flagship Platinum Assessment, Dr Jenkins has personally designed two evaluations. The Cullinan Assessment for women 40 and above combines 3D digital mammography, CT coronary angiography, transvaginal ultrasound, mole check, bone density scanning and hormonal profiling. The Under 40s Ultimate Health Assessment, built around MRI and ultrasound rather than CT, includes prostate MRI with PSA testing, testicular ultrasound and the Q-FIT stool test, 92 per cent accurate for early colon cancer detection. A cancer-inclusive assessment, focused on the two areas the region’s data most warrants attention, is available on request. All are available in the UAE through Echelon’s trusted regional partners, with imaging at The Doctors Center in Jumeirah 3 and reporting by UK-based consultant specialist radiologists.

Every one of the cancers found in the 2025 audit was caught in time to be treated. Echelon’s position is straightforward: longevity is the programme, and this is the baseline the programme needs. Ahead of the campaigns that October and November will bring, Dr Jenkins argues the more important date is the one on the reader’s next available diary page.