365 Cancer Awareness

October is breast (and also liver) cancer awareness month. During this month it’s become customary to wear pink ribbons 🎀 to honour survivors, remember those lost to the disease, and to demonstrate support for the progress being made to defeat breast cancer.

Why?  Well in short, breast cancer is the most common cancer worldwide… It’s also the most commonly occurring cancer in women.

As of the end of 2020, there were 7.8m women alive who were diagnosed with breast cancer in the past 5yrs, making it the world’s most prevalent cancer*

As the rightfully poignant ‘pink month’ draws to a close, it seems apt to reflect on its significance but also to consider the fact that our awareness and efforts in the fight against ‘the big C’ need not (and should not) be confined to October.

Thanks to the incredibly important recognition, research and funding generated by cancer awareness-raising activities (and of course all of the endlessly devoted and inspiring people/organisations behind them), our understanding of this invasive and all-too-often fatal disease is, albeit slowly, undergoing a revolution.

The result is more strategic screening, increasingly targeted treatments and where possible, a shift in emphasis towards prevention. As it’s beautifully articulated in Dr. Jason Fung’s book #thecancercode for the first time ever, the death rate from cancer is (finally) showing a steady decline.

With all of this in mind, the slides above give a bit of info about many of the cancer ribbon colour meanings and their dedicated awareness months**. My hope is that it may help to motivate us to maintain our support, awareness and, perhaps most importantly of all, our compassion towards those affected by cancer throughout every month of the year.

*as per Global Cancer Observatory/WHO data

**info extracted from https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/323448 (updated 23 Aug 2022)