PARIS • Singer Alicia Keys' mother is a breast cancer survivor while fashion designer Stella McCartney lost her mum to the disease.

Yesterday, they launched an awareness campaign aimed at African-American women who have much higher mortality rates than white women.

The British designer, whose mother Linda died in 1998 aged 56, will give a percentage of the proceeds from a new pink lingerie set to the Memorial Sloan Kettering Breast Examination Center in Harlem, which provides free testing in New York City.

Keys, 36, said in a campaign video: "This really resonates with me because I was brought up in Harlem and my mother is a breast cancer survivor. We want to really encourage people to break the taboos and go and get checked."

Statistics have shown that African-American women have a 42 per cent higher chance of mortality than white women due to lack of access to early screening and prevention programmes.

McCartney, 46, in Paris for her label's fashion week show, said: "Sadly, I lost my mother to breast cancer 19 years ago. She didn't meet my children."

She has four children.

The designer has run three previous annual awareness campaigns fronted by models Kate Moss and Cara Delevingne and comedienne Chelsea Handler.

Some of the money raised will also go to the Linda McCartney Centre at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital in Britain, which helps cancer patients and their families.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE