because the children of today all deserve a tomorrow
Childhood Cancer, is there really a problem?
Childhood cancer is much more common than we think
Every year, there are more than 4,000 children and young people diagnosed with cancer in the UK.
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11 children and young people are diagnosed with cancer every day, and of these, 3 will not survive.
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1 in 500 children will develop cancer by the age of 14.*
1 in every 285 children will develop cancer before their twentieth birthday. **
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Childhood cancer is the number one medical cause of death of children in the UK***
Overall, survival rates for children with cancer have improved markedly over the last 40 years.
Currently, the average survival rate of children diagnosed with cancer stands at 82% survival at 5 years after diagnosis.
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The improved overall survival rates are in main due to the improvements in a few of the most common childhood cancers.
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The reality remains that the rarer cancer types, especially rare solid tissue tumours have had had only very modest improvements in survival due to a lack of research and funding in these areas.
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Some rare tumours, for example rhabdoid tumours only have 5 year survival rates in single figures. It is this in particular that we are working to help change.
Children that survive 5 years after diagnosis can still be faced with long term health problems as well as the threat of relapse and secondary cancers too.
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There are now over 35,000 childhood cancer survivors living in the UK, each survivor often living with a number of chronic conditions.
By funding research to help work towards improving survival rates and also kinder treatments with less long term side effects, we hope that over time, we can work to help change this.
* Based on statistics from CRUK, 2014
**Based on statistics taken from the Special Report on Childhood Cancer; American Cancer Society (2014).
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