President of the Barbados Cancer Society, Dr. Dorothy Cooke-Johnson interacting with the pupils of the Grantley Prescod Memorial Primary School. On Friday, the Progressive Optimist Club launched the ‘Let’s Smile Cancer Away Gold Button Drive’ at that school.
Check children for signs of cancer
Sun, 09/25/2016 - 12:00am
By:
Marsha Gittens
Parents are being encouraged to pay close attention to their children to detect any signs of cancer.
This advice comes from President of the Barbados Cancer Society, Dr. Dorothy Cooke-Johnson, who stated that children “have an enormous chance – probably a 60, 80 or a 100 per cent chance – of recovering from it [cancer], depending upon what it is and of course, how late it has been diagnosed.
“I am imploring all parents out there to look at your children carefully in case there are any lumps or bumps; in case they are nauseous or sick; in case they have headaches; in case they walk into the wall or they get an eye movement or they have white in their eyes or maybe they have got bone pain, because the bones at the end where they start to grow, that is where cancer comes in – osteo-cancer – and so then that would be found early. The earlier the better,” she noted.
Cooke-Johnson pointed out that presently the number of children diagnosed with cancer is about “10 or 12 children on the go or over time. Some of them are ill and some of them are recovering”.
The president was speaking to the media on the sidelines of the launch of the “Let’s Smile Cancer Away Gold Button Drive” by the Progressive Optimist Club, which was held recently at the Grantley Prescod Memorial Primary School.
She encouraged students and their parents to be supportive of the initiative, while also commending the Progressive Optimist Club for introducing it.
“It is a beautiful school with lovely children and it is the best place in the world to start this drive for children’s cancer, to alert children by giving them this wonderful maxim, ‘Smile Away Cancer’.
“And after they smile away cancer, there is this beautiful badge here which has got a lovely smiley face on it and what it really is trying to do, is to get the children at this age… to be aware of cancer in a simple way, so that they would perhaps be able to recognise any symptoms in themselves, and they would be able to have empathy and support for any other children that they hear of who may have cancer.”