February 3, 2016

How you can help in the fight against blood cancer, on World Cancer Day

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imageBy Nadia, Margot’s auntie

Tomorrow, Thursday 4 February, is World Cancer Day. The aim of this global annual awareness day is to try and save millions of preventable deaths each year by raising awareness and education about the disease along with pressing governments and individuals across the world to take positive action.

As the website, www.worldcancerday.org states, there are 8.2milion people who die from cancer worldwide each year. That’s a shocking figure, especially when you consider that it’s 22,500 people – men, women and children – who die from cancer every single day.

The mind boggles.

Can one awareness day, or in some cases an awareness week or month, make a difference ?

Absolutely, YES: if it helps make people aware of cancer symptoms that might otherwise go undetected, and it garners support for ongoing research in the hope that we will one day eradicate this horrid disease. And in the meantime, it provides hope and a crutch to help those who are struggling with cancer. Awareness days remind people that action is still needed. That there are things we can all still do and action that we can take which might save a life.

Prevention is one thing, but in the case of blood cancer, there’s also a potential cure.

You.

That is why Team Margot createdimage our Stem Cell and Bone Marrow Awareness Day on the 7 October:

• We want to make people aware that a very simple act of either spitting in a tube, or swabbing the inside of your cheek, or by giving an extra 5ml of blood at your next blood donation can put you on standby to save someone’s life. 9/10 times the stem cell donation process itself is via blood donation.

• Until there is a cure for blood cancer, then You might be the only help available for a patient in desperate need

• To jog your memory if, when you took that first positive step and registered online to receive a DIY kit, you later forgot to complete your registration by spitting or swabbing and sending it back

• That you can tell someone else how easy, yet vitally important, it is to register as a potential stem cell / bone marrow donor

• That it’s a numbers game and that every single one of us counts

We can all make a difference and by sharing we are giving others the opportunity to make a difference too.

Please do something positive to support World Cancer Day. You needn’t wait until tomorrow.

Thank you.

Team Margot
Together, saving lives

Husband to Vicki and father to Oscar (2007), Rufus (2008), Digby (2015), Humphrey (2017) & Margot (2012-2014)

Posted in: Journal