Recently, an important report was released by the Canadian Cancer Research Alliance, “Cancer Research Investment in Canada 2007″.  

Consistent with CCRA reports in previous years, information is provided on cancer investments by funder, cancer site and type of cancer research. The special topic for the 2007 report, however, is childhood/adolescent cancer research.

The report identified that approximately three percent of peer-reviewed cancer research was devoted to this age group, with 23 percent of this amount coming from the Canadian Cancer Society.  Our BC/Yukon Division was proud to be the single largest contributor to the overall CCS total.

Thankfully, only about one percent of cancers occur in children and adolescents. Some have argued that this group is “over invested” when it comes to cancer research funding.

But I differ.

If all you care about is numbers, think about potential years of life lost. A child dying of cancer at age five has been robbed of some 80 years of life. Hardly seems fair! and think about the emotional hardships faced by the family as they deal with such a challenge.

It is also becoming clear that while cancer survival rates for children and adolescents are increasing, most are left with the chronic and/or late effects of their therapies.  So we need more research to discover better treatments.

Ultimately, our dream is prevention. To stop cancer before it even starts, so ‘kids’ and ‘cancer’ would never be used in the same sentence.

If you are able, please help make this dream come true.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 10:11 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.