Treat your body like a temple, know what you consume, know how you take care of it : Tollywood Diva Sreeleela

Unfortunately Cancer being a stigma, Cancer survivors don’t speak about the happy outcomes : Dr Vijay Anand Reddy

India

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Hyderabad/New Delhi, February 4^th, 2023:

Apollo Cancer Centres and Cure Foundation, hosted ‘Pedal to Battle’ cyclothon to commemorate the World Cancer Day 2023, with the theme ‘Unite our Voices and Take Action’, as part of the campaign being run by Union for International Cancer Control, today at Apollo Cancer Centres, Jubilee Hills. The riders were felicitated by American born Tollywood Diva Sreeleela and Dr Vijay Anand Reddy, Director, Apollo Cancer Centre, Hyderabad. The cyclothon was flagged of at Apollo Cancer Centres, Jubilee Hills, the bicycles riders went up to Whisper Valley and retuned to Apollo Cancer Centres, Jubilee Hills. The participants sensitized the public on cancer prevention and early detection. Dr Vijay Karan Reddy, Consultant Oncologist, Apollo Cancer Centres, anchored the show.

Every year 4^th Feb is dedicated to spread cancer awareness and marked as World Cancer Day.  The theme of this World Cancer Day is to unite our voices and take action which is part of a 3 year campaign started by UICC (Union for International Cancer Control) called Close the Care Gap.  It’s a plea for all of us to raise our voices against cancer with a United force and take things into our own hands.

“Awareness is the panacea to prevention and early detection of cancer. Though the rising incidence of Cancer is alarming, Cancer is curable is reassuring. We need to empower the populace with information on prevention and early detection, that itself will help stem the rise in cases” says Dr Sangita Reddy.

“As an oncologist, I come across people asking me if cancer is curable? Because people take cancer as a death sentence, it is unfortunate that they mostly hear only bad and sad stories, where people lost their lives. Lets not blame Cancer, we are blaming cancer because most of patients die due their advanced stage of the disease. We need to do be blamed for it, we need to do certain things to prevent cancer, to detect cancer, cancer is highly highly curable. Even today 70% of the patients who come to my clinic from across the globe, are all cured.

Unfortunately it’s a stigma, a patient who is diagnosed of cancer, doesn’t want to be identified as a cancer patient, so you hardly hear those good stories, we only listen to the bad stories. Unfortunately even in the film industry, if a character has to die, he would be diagnosed with cancer. We all need to focus on prevention and early detection. Prevention, like all of you have shown in the morning, a good exercise of 30 to 40 minutes per day, say no to tobacco, eat vegetarian diet and less of non-vegetarian, low fat diet, that prevents 70% of the cancers as we see today. If you know that and promote that, practice and preach, we can certainly prevent cancer, Not just cancers, we can also prevent major diseases like heart attacks, brain stroke” says Dr Vijay Anand Reddy, Director, Apollo Cancer Centres, Hyderabad.

Ms. Sreeleela said, “we are all here because its World Cancer Day, to spread awareness about cancer, everyone knows it exists, but people don’t understand how serious it is. I am here to sensitise how important early detection of cancer is. We spend time on several frivolous things, including going through WhatsApp, social media, we watch thousands of feeds, million statuses, but how many of them are important and productive for us. I want and expect all of you to put up one story, one post or whatever, be it in social media or WhatsApp about cancer.

Because lot of people only get to know about it when its very very late. Two of my grandmothers were diagnosed of cancer and cured. Like Dr Vijay Anand Reddy rightly said, early detection is equivalent to cure. So don’t make it too late. People don’t listen to their body these days, because they are too busy with the outside world. So I urge you all to take it seriously, because small small things like time to time getting yourself checked, woman mammography above the age of forty for breast cancer, HPV vaccination for cervical cancers, staying away from the high risk factors like smoking, its these small small things we need to stop. Treat your body like a temple, know what you consume, know how you take care of it.”       

“We know the strong force we can create when we bring our thoughts and actions together (winning against Covid 19). We should pledge to do the same against cancer, to not only protect ourselves from cancer but to do the same for your family, friends and community. It could be as simple as being a shoulder to cry on. As a community, we should also strive to bridge the gap of inequality in access to cancer care”, Dr Vijay Karan Reddy, Consultant Oncologist, Apollo Hospitals said.

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