World Cancer Day 2019

4th February 2019

Today is World Cancer Day, marking one day out of the year with which to show support, raise awareness and take personal action.

This year, World Cancer Day’s theme is #IAmAndIWill. Guts UK, as a founding member of the Less Survivable Cancers Taskforce (LSCT), is fighting for a better survival rate of the less survivable cancers.

What are the less survivable cancers?

The SIX less survivable cancers make up around 50% of all cancer-related deaths in the UK, 4 of which are digestive.

Brain
Stomach
Oesophagus
Liver
Lung
Pancreas

While research has made groundbreaking developments in treatments and survival rates for certain cancers, these six cancers are just as deadly as they were 40 years ago, and have a collective 5-year survival rate of 14%.

The LSCT is working to double this to 28% by 2029 by calling on the Government to invest efforts into these cancers that sadly, have been neglected and underfunded.

Guts UK has funded 27 research studies into digestive cancers. We’ve still got a long way to go, but together we can get there. It is so vital that we raise awareness of these cancers so that we can find answers and improve diagnosis.

This World Cancer Day 2019, Guts UK is here and we are fighting to improve the survival rate of these less survivable cancers.