Children’s Cancer Center leads awareness campaign

The Children’s Cancer Center (CCC) of the Southern Philippines Medical Center continues to intensify efforts in raising awareness as part of the World Cancer Day celebration on Feb. 4.
For this year’s celebration, the Union for International Cancer Control launched a three-year “I AM AND I WILL” campaign, described as “an empowering call-to-action urging for personal commitment and represents the power of individual action taken now to impact the future.”
According to Dr. Mae Concepcion Dolendo, head of CCC, they have already printed posters about childhood cancer warning signs. The IEC materials were disseminated to all city health centers in Davao City as part of their awareness campaign.
Proclamation No.1, series of 2018 issued by Mayor Sara Duterte declares Feb. 15 as International Childhood Cancer Day.
“For children, we cannot totally prevent cancer, but what we can do for them is to detect (the disease) early so we could have bigger chances of cure. Spreading this will educate the people so that they will know where to go when the symptoms arise,” Dolendo said.
Dolendo also added that taking part in the celebration is important to raise awareness and to encourage detection, prevention, and treatment.
In 2018, the Philippines recorded 141,000 cases of cancer in both adults and children, with breast and lung cancer as the common types according to Dolendo. She also added that there were about 10 million people around the world who died because of cancer.
“If we think about it, one-third of all the cases can be prevented and another one-third can be detected early. If we can detect cancer early, the chances of survival and cure are higher,” she said.