We don’t seem to have these figures in South Africa but I’m sure we can find them with some research so for the purpose of this exercise the figures used are all based on US stats. Unlike breast cancer, the general public is almost completely unaware of what prostate cancer is, what the symptoms are, and unfortunately, what the outcome is if it isn’t discovered early enough. Last year, 207,090 wom
en were diagnosed with breast cancer. That’s 10,000 people less than prostate cancer, and yet most of us can name at least 1 person we know that was diagnosed with breast cancer, but not prostate cancer. Here at Blue Bowtie (and any organisation in South Africa that is prepared to help), we want to change the way everyone looks at and promotes men’s health issues. It’s time to give as much time, money, an attention to prostate cancer awareness and funding as we do for breast cancer.
• Our fathers, husbands, boyfriends, sons, and life partners deserve it.
• It’s time for the men in our lives to know we support them.
• It’s time for the men in our lives to know that we want them to get prostate cancer screenings.
• It’s time for the men in our lives to know that will be there for them throughout the prostate cancer treatment process. We need our men to speak out so other men know they are not alone. If or when they can’t, we need to speak out for them. We want to see the men’s and women sporting teams (like the Blue Bulls for example) wearing blue right alongside the pink they wear to promote breast cancer awareness. We want to see celebrities giving away millions of free prostate exams. We want to see people wearing blue bowties and pinning blue bowties to their cars to promote prostate cancer awareness. We want to see teenagers raise money for prostate cancer research. What we really want to see is equality in the types of awareness efforts and funding we have for both men’s and women’s health issues.
