Together we will find a cure
Donate
Brain Tumour Awareness Month
March is Brain Tumour Awareness Month. A month for raising awareness, raising hats and raising the bar!
Brain tumours are indiscriminate; they can affect anyone at any age. What’s more, they kill more children and adults under the age of 40 than any other cancer.
We are determined to shine a spotlight on the shocking statistics and continued underfunding for brain tumours.
We have been unearthing compelling facts and statistics for over 10 years, since our launch in April 2009. This year (2020) we have discovered that:
- For the under 50s, brain tumours account for
- 1 in 10 cancer deaths in England and Wales
- For males, it is 1 in 7
- For females, it is 1 in 13
- What’s more, for children, brain tumours account for 1 in 3 deaths from cancer
- Yet only 2% of the national investment in cancer research is now allocated to this devastating disease (just 1% since records began)
- That's 3 times less than prostate cancer, from which only 12 males under the age of 50 died in 2018
- 5 times less than leukaemia, which kills half as many under 50s than brain tumours
- 7 times less than breast cancer, despite the fact that breast cancer only kills 1.5 times more people under 50 than brain tumours
Source: Figures from the ONS (August 2019 for 2018 stats) and NCRI (Feb 2020). For 2002/3 to 2018/19 just under £100 million has been spent on research in to brain tumours, £300 million on prostate, £500 million on leukaemia, and £679 million on breast cancer.
This is the most important month of the year for the brain tumour community.
We need you to get involved now.
Share these shocking statistics as widely as you can on your social media networks, in your newsletters, in your community magazine, on your website, on your intranet, wherever you can.
United in action, across all of our communities and networks, we can create powerful opportunities for change, opportunities for new partnerships and game-changing collaborations; to discover new treatments and importantly to provide improved outcomes for all brain tumour patients and their families.
Wear A Hat Day is the culmination of Brain Tumour Awareness Month
If you only do one other thing for Brain Tumour Awareness Month, then take part in Wear A Hat Day on Friday 27th March.
This event, which we started in 2010, is the most established brain tumour awareness and fundraising event in the UK. It is a great way to be involved with us and to achieve a frenzy of awareness and fundraising at the end of Brain Tumour Awareness Month!
Legacies of Brain Tumour Awareness Month
UK Brain Tumour Awareness Month in March was founded by Member Charities of Brain Tumour Research in 2004 in order to raise vital awareness of the chronic lack of funding, to influence key decision makers and to challenge UK Governments and larger cancer
charities to invest more nationally in order to sustain the vital long-term research that’s so desperately needed.
A minute's silence
Every year at the beginning of March, to mark Brain Tumour Awareness Month, we take the opportunity to pause, reflect and show our respect for those lost to brain tumours.
A short poem is read followed by a minute’s silence at each of our dedicated Research Centres of Excellence, as well as our Head Office, at 11am. Afterwards, at our Centres, we lay a commemorative wreath at the base of each Wall of Hope.
We hope that this can become a national observance, so please consider participating in a minute’s silence wherever you are at 11am on Monday 2nd March, remembering your loved one and all of those lost to this devastating disease,with this short poem:
We thought of you with love today,
but that is nothing new.
We thought about you yesterday,
and days before that too.
You are forever in our hearts.