Childhood Cancer Awareness Month

Did you know?

• One in every 330 Americans develops cancer before the age of twenty.
• On the average, 36 children and adolescents are diagnosed with cancer everyday in the United States.
• Each year about 3,000 children die. That's 11 children every single day, every single year. About 35-40,000 more are in treatment each year.
• On the average, one in every four elementary schools has a child with cancer. The average high school has two students who are current or former cancer patients.
• Cancer is the leading cause of death by disease in children under the age of 15 in the United States, more than from asthma, diabetes, cystic fibrosis, congenital anomalies, and pediatric AIDS combined.
• Childhood cancer has a huge societal impact - 180,000 potential years of life are lost to it EVERY year!
• The causes of most childhood cancers are unknown. At present, childhood cancer cannot be prevented.
• The median age for childhood cancer is six. Children frequently have a more advanced stage of cancer when they are first diagnosed. 80% of children show that cancer has spread to distant sites in the body when the disease is first diagnosed.
• Childhood cancer occurs regularly, randomly and spares no ethnic group, socioeconomic class, or geographic region. In the United States, the incidence of cancer among adolescents and young adults is increasing at a greater rate than any other age group, except those over 65 years.

Despite these facts, childhood cancer research is vastly and consistently underfunded. The National Cancer Institute's (NCI) federal budget was $4.6 billion. Of that, breast cancer received 12%, prostate cancer received 7%, and all 12 major groups of pediatric cancers combined received less than 3%.

PLEASE write your members of Congress to demand full funding of the Caroline Pryce Walker Conquer Childhood Cancer Act. The current proposed funding is $10 million, $20 million short of Public Law 110-285 as authorized by Congress.

What else can you do?

Contact SOMEBODY! Please take it upon yourself to write the media. Locally and nationally. Give the stats and talk about funding issues. This will help raise awareness. With awareness comes funding. With funding comes research. With research comes a cure.