Every month, 25 THOUSAND children will be diagnosed with cancer around the world, and 6,667 families will experience the loss of a child from cancer. On the positive side, in the United States we now cure more than 80% of children with cancer (up from 10% only 50 years ago!). However, funding for research into childhood cancer is sorely lacking (only about 4% of the National Cancer Institute – NCI budget during any given year) and increased awareness is absolutely essential to generating the public and private funds needed to keep up with the tremendous advances we have made over the last several decades.
Although we are able to cure over 80% of children with cancer, over two-thirds of those children will end up having long-term side effects of which many can be devastating (cognitive delay, infertility, secondary cancers, etc). This problem, makes developing new more effective and less toxic therapies for childhood cancer even more urgent. To help increase this awareness, September is officially designated Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. Some big time celebrity events have already occurred to help spread awareness and I am sure more will follow this month.
We at Harbor-UCLA/LA Biomed are proud to be a clinical research site for the Children’s Oncology Group which in various forms has been around since the 1960’s and has been instrumental in achieving the successes and increased cure rates we now have. CureSearch for Children’s Cancer is one of many foundations that helps to fund the Children’s Oncology Group and its mission to cure and prevent all childhood cancer.
Other notable groups include:
www.alexslemonade.org
www.stbaldricks.org
pablove.org
Among many many others:
http://www.ped-onc.org/ccorg.html
So please:
#MakeItGoldForKids