Wanting to explore every reasonable option available and believing treatment options after chemotherapy on the NHS are “very limited”, Raju is looking elsewhere for treatments.
According to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), external, standard NHS care for primary brain tumours relies on surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy, with immunotherapy drugs not approved as standard frontline treatments.
Raju is aiming to raise £200,000 to access personalised immunotherapy and dendritic cell treatments abroad in countries like India, Germany and the US.
With more than £165,000 raised so far, he has said he is in “awe” of people’s generosity.
“The power of community is amazing,” he added. “It’s really touched me to be honest. It touches my heart, my wife, my family, we are in awe of everyone.”
Raju said any money left over from the treatment would be used to support other people facing brain cancer or similar life-limiting conditions.
“Whatever we can do to help people, that’s what I want the money to go towards as well,” he said.
As well as raising money, Raju said he wanted to encourage people to get checked out, particularly men and members of the Punjabi South Asian community, where he said cancer remained a taboo subject.
“Not a lot of people in our own community discuss this enough,” he said. “I need to get the word out there’s going to be a lot more people like me, especially men my age.
“I’m not a medical expert, but I’m trying my best to give advice to people.
“If I didn’t get this checked out they mentioned within six months I probably would have dropped or not woke up one morning.
“We need to get checked out. Men and women, kids, everyone needs to get checked out and make sure they know what they’re doing with their own health and body.”