Cancer Research is our new charity

Here in BA, before Christmas, we asked everyone what charity needs our help and their answer was Cancer Research. So, we decided to name them our charity of the year and here is why…

First of all what is cancer?

Cancer is a term used for diseases in which abnormal cells divide uncontrollably and are able to invade other tissues. They can spread to other parts of the body through blood and lymph systems. Our bodies are made up of over one hundred million billion cells and cancer can be caused by a chance in just one of these cells or a small group of them.

• In the UK alone, someone is diagnosed with cancer every 2 mins!
• That’s 720 people a day
• 1 in every 3 of us will get it!
• There’s more than 331,000 people diagnosed with cancer every year in the UK
• There are more than 200 types of cancer
• The risk of developing cancer up to the age of 50
• years is 1 in 35 for men and 1 in 20 for women
• Less than one per cent of all cancers occur in children (aged 0-14).
• Less than one per cent of all cancers occur in teenagers (aged 15-24)
• Cancer is the number 1 fear for the British Public
• Over 20,000 people die from cancer every day
• There are 28 million cancer survivors world wide
• There are more skin cancer causes by sun beds than lung cancer cases from smoking
• Breast cancer kills 450 men every year in America alone
• 1 in 8 deaths in the world are linked to cancer

Enough of the scary stuff lets look at how survival rates have greatly improved. 78% of breast cancer patients are now predicted to survive for at least 10 years, bowel patients 57%, lung 5% and all other cancers 50%. Looking back to 15 years ago this statistic was 71% and back 45 years the survival rate was only 40%.

So what does Cancer Research do?

They use your generous donations to fund their scientists in finding their cure for cancer and are currently fundraising for a £100million for the largest biomedical research unit in Europe, which will be in London. They state on their website that “thanks to donations, we can help to prevent and treat cancer”

Cancer research are starting to carry out some new research, such as the effect of diet, weight gain or loss and exercise on breast cancer, to see what effect this has on people with cancer and those who could be diagnosed with it.

If any of you are holding charity events for Cancer Research, take plenty of photos, as we would LOVE to see them. Who knows, they might even make it into our next Gazzetta!