Cancer Organization fights to promote early testing for childhood cancer across the world

• While statistics show that over 160,000 children worldwide are newly diagnosed with cancer each year, the exact number of new cases each year is not known as cancer registers do not exist in many countries.
• Significant advances have been made in diagnosis and therapy during the past four decades and the good news is that childhood cancer can largely be cured if detected sufficiently early.
• Yet children with cancer who live in developing countries have less than a 50 per cent survival rate, as opposed to 80 per cent for children living in developed countries.
• The International Union Against Cancer (UICC), a Geneva based NGO, and its members of cancer-fighting organisations in over 80 countries, are dedicating World Cancer Day 2006 to childhood cancer.
• Under the slogan, 'My Child Matters', World Cancer Day will take place on Saturday 4 February 2006 and focus on early detection and equal access to treatment, as well as celebrating the lives of all children around the world in the fight against childhood cancer.
• Knowing the signs can save a child's life The types of cancer that occur in children differ greatly from those found in adults, as do the treatments and survival rates.
• For example, leukaemia represents almost a third of all childhood cancers in Europe, America and East Asia, where it is the most common childhood cancer.
• Since most of the symptoms of cancer can be interpreted as common child ailments, parents should insist, where possible, that physicians carry out tests to rule out cancer.
• Across the globe, we need to make surviving cancer the rule, not the exception.
• The young talents of the Little Dreams Foundation, created by international singer and song writer Phil Collins with his wife Orianne, support UICC in their fight against childhood cancer.