Lanterns shine brightfor cancer awareness

The event was organised as part of the Hastings and Rother Community Cancer Awareness Project, which works in the local community to help improve health outcomes relating to cancer. This includes encouraging people to take part in screening programmes for breast and bowel cancers.

Co-ordinator of the project David Holloway said: “The event went well with about 35 people attending in all. The lanterns looked good and it felt like a really good community event. The Parade route took about 35 minutes to complete and everyone finished.

“The Market event preceding the Parade was well attended with about eight stalls.

“I think all participants thoroughly enjoyed the event and felt that whilst there were areas for improvement it was generally really successful as a means of raising cancer awareness.”

Hastings and Rother Community Cancer Awareness Project works in the local community to help improve health outcomes relating to cancer. This includes encouraging people to take part in screening programmes for breast and bowel cancers.

There has been good progress locally at increasing earlier presentation of cancer and more people are surviving cancer in Hastings and Rother compared to previous years. However, some parts of Hastings have significantly lower uptake for both breast and bowel cancer screening compared to country-wide figures. For breast cancer screening, in some areas, only 49 per cent of women in Hastings take part, compared to 72 per cent nationally.

Screening programmes help detect changes before they turn into cancer and find cancers earlier.

According to figures from Public Health England, only 43 per cent of cancers are found at an early stage in Hastings and Rother compared to 51 per cent nationally.

For more visit www.facebook.com/awarenesscancer.