Breast cancer patient Dr Ann Fingret, 74, travels to Westminster tomorrow to demand more support for her fellow sufferers.

Dr Fingret, from Swinbrook, near Burford, is part of Breast Cancer Care's Secondary Taskforce, a national coalition of experts and sufferers who want more help for people with secondary cancer which has spread and cannot be cured.

Task force members will ask a panel of MPs and health chiefs, including national cancer director Prof Mike Richards, to create cancer registries to collect data on secondary breast cancer. They also want all secondary breast cancer patients to have access to a key worker.

Dr Fingret, who is retired, but served as chief medical officer at the BBC, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1986. She had a lumpectomy and radiotherapy, but further cancer was discovered and treated in 1994 with mastectomy and chemotherapy.

In 1999 she developed secondary breast cancer in her lungs.

She has since undergone surgery and is taking the cancer drug Arimidex.

She said she was shocked by the lack of support available following her diagnosis with secondary cancer.

"What you really need is someone to run your case but there is no-one," she said.

"Not only are you in need of psychological support, you are probably feeling very unwell, and it would really help to have someone like a breast cancer nurse to offer practical support and also to tell you that this isn't the end."

She added: "I had to go looking for help and ended up running my own case. But I had medical experience, whereas most people don't."

"Another issue is that a lot of people, me included at the time of my diagnosis, think secondary cancer means thank you and goodnight' but it doesn't."

Secondary breast cancer is breast cancer that has spread to another part of the body through the lymphatic or blood system.

Unlike primary breast cancer, secondary cancer cannot be cured, although it can be treated and controlled, sometimes for years.

Breast cancer mortality rates fell by 18 per cent from 1996-2005.

Dr Fingret said: "If we had a proper system to collect information on patient numbers and survival rates, it would give people more hope. I have had four grandchildren born since my diagnosis, so I know there's lots of life to be had."

Dr Fingret will put her case to her MP, David Cameron, during his next visit to Burford in a couple of weeks.