Al Roker announced on NBC’s Today show that he has been diagnosed with prostate cancer. The anchor said he will be undergoing surgery to have his prostate removed.
“It’s a good news-bad news kind of thing,” said the 66-year-old NBC News co-host on Friday. “Good news is we caught it early. Not great news is that it’s a little aggressive, so I’m going to be taking some time off to take care of this.”
Roker will be undergoing surgery next week at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, according to NBC News, and hopes to return to the show in two weeks.
In revealing his diagnosis, Roker said he hoped to spotlight how Black men are at-risk for the disease and bring awareness to the fact that 1 in 7 African American men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their life.
“The problem for African American men is that any number of reasons from genetics to access to health care, and so we want to make it available and let people know they got to get checked,” said Roker.
