At the moment we don’t know what things will look like in November. But what we do know is that pancreatic cancer won’t wait and it won’t stop our amazing supporters, like you, from doing all you can to raise awareness of the disease.
How you can make a difference
Learn and share the symptoms
Make sure you know the symptoms of pancreatic cancer and share them with family, friends and colleagues. Check out the awareness materials we have available for download, that you can either share on social media or download, print and display.
If you would like to order printed materials please get in touch at pcam@pancreaticcancer.org.uk.
Light up your home or a landmark
Raise awareness of pancreatic cancer by lighting up your home or landmark purple. Taking place on World Pancreatic Cancer Day - 19th November – Purple Lights for pancreatic cancer presents an opportunity to remember loved ones who have sadly died of pancreatic cancer and to acknowledge those living with or beyond the disease.
Why is raising awareness important?
Pancreatic cancer is considered to be a common cancer and around 10,000 people a year are diagnosed with the disease. Sadly, around 9,000 people will also die every year meaning it has the lowest survival of all common cancers.
There are many reasons for this. Symptoms are often vague and not recognised and people are experiencing unnecessary delays to get diagnosed, and waiting too long to be referred for treatment. Alongside this, effective new treatments are not being developed. As a result, 9 out of 10 people with pancreatic cancer don’t get the treatment they need to give them the best chance to survive.
The symptoms of pancreatic cancer
As well as being quite vague, the symptoms of pancreatic cancer may come and go to begin with, and some people may not have all of them.
The symptoms can also be caused by more common things but it’s really important that anyone who experiences the symptoms of pancreatic cancer contacts their GP.
This year, it’s more important than ever that we encourage people not to delay – and that we get the message out that people should not worry about their GP or the NHS being too busy at the moment, or it being unsafe.
Pancreatic cancer won’t wait for the coronavirus pandemic to be over, and so we must not stop raising awareness of this disease.
Purple Lights for pancreatic cancer
Taking place on World Pancreatic Cancer Day - 19th November – Purple Lights for pancreatic cancer involves lighting up your own home or contacting a prominent landmark in your local area to light up purple so as to put a spotlight on a disease that deserves more recognition.
The act of lighting up a home or focal point in a village, town or city is a way to remember loved ones who have sadly died of pancreatic cancer and to acknowledge those living with or beyond the disease. It might not be possible to light up landmarks this year, so we are encouraging you to focus on lighting up your home purple. We’ve collated lots of creative ideas of how to do this over on our dedicated website.
Please use your judgement as to whether to contact a venue or landmark to ask them to light up. Right now, that venue might be closed due to the pandemic, or recently opened having been closed for several months and only running with skeleton staff.
