Childhood Cancer

When I think about those infants and children being pushed through a parking lot in a stroller at the same level as exhaust pipes of cars. Or playing out in the yard, crawling on a carpet after someone walked on the lawn that has been treated with fertilizer. Even the times when I have seen a new borne whose mother has smoked during the pregnancy.

Also the times kids have to endure their parents second hand smoke it’s amazing in the United States only seven children succumb to cancer daily. While some hospital rankings is better than others, yearly 13,500 children are diagnosed with cancer and 2500 will die. On average 36 children and adolescents are diagnosed with cancer everyday.

In the United States, on average one in every four elementary schools has a child with cancer. Childhood cancer occurs regularly, randomly and spares no ethnic group or socioeconomic class or geographic region. While the incidence of invasive pediatric cancer has raised 29% in the past 20 years. Increasing at a greater rate than any other age group except those over 65 years. http://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/top-20-questions-about-vaccination Cancer and Vaccine Link?

Cancer is the leading cause of death in children under the age of 15 in the United States (one in five children diagnosed will die within 5 years and one in three children diagnosed will not live – out a normal life span.) Many pediatric cancers, for instance neuroblastoma and disseminated medulloblastoma are terminal upon progression or recurrence. With the average age of death for a child with cancer being 8 years causing a child to lose 69 years of life expectancy (Neuroblastoma Survivor Stories.)

Cancer kills more children than AID’s, asthma, diabetes, cystic fibrois and congential anomalies combined. Despite these facts, childhood cancer research is vastly and consistently underfunded, 74% of childhood cancer survivors have chronic illness. While 40% of childhood cancer survivors have severe illnesses or die from such illnesses and are at significant risk for secondary cancers later in life.