FEBRUARY 4 IS WORLD CANCER DAY : BRECAN MARKS THE EVENT WITH STUDENTS

BRECAN joined other cancer organisations world wide in marking 2011 World Cancer Day urging our immediate communities to take part in all actions to fight cancer and raise the profile of the disease for everyone to realise that it kills more people than AIDS, malaria and TB combined! We had a fantastic outing with our host school , the Kambridge Comprehensive College, Ring Road Ibadan. Dr Demola Adebanjo of Dept of Surgery, University College Hospital, Ibadan was the speaker on cancer awareness and prevention. The key messages were: 1. the need to reduce risk factors such as tobacco use, alcohol consumption and obesity through healthy lifestyle (whereby the students were advised to say no to tobacco/cigarette smoking and alcohol and say yes to eating fruits and vegetables); 2. urging government to put in place effective cancer control programmes, 3. creating access to vaccination for virus causing cancers such human papiloma that causes cervical cancer and 4. promoting grassroots enlightenment programmes for a better informed public. The speaker knew his audience, made his language simple and communicated effectively with the students. The highlight was the signing of the declaration forms “to help bring the growing cancer crisis to the attention of government leaders and policymakers in order to significantly reduce the global cancer burden by 2020” which will become part of supporters for a Cancer Free World and will be presented to the world’s leaders at the first UN Summit for Non-Communicable Diseases (NCD’s) in September 2011. Four media houses were present. We all had fun learning about cancer.

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