A powerful scary movie trailer, Friday 13th, has been launched today, World Pancreatic Cancer Day, to point out what is truly terrifying in real life - being diagnosed with a disease that only 4% of people in the UK will survive. The aim of the video is to raise widespread awareness of pancreatic cancer and its symptoms, to try and increase the number of people diagnosed at an early stage and in time for life-saving surgery.
Every day, 24 people are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and most will die within 4 to 6 months. While survival rates of many cancers have improved significantly over 40 years, the shockingly low survival rate of this disease has not changed at all.
Ali Stunt, chief executive at Pancreatic Cancer Action and rare survivor of pancreatic cancer, said: “Due to a chronic lack of awareness, people are often diagnosed too late for surgery, which is currently the only cure. We must ensure more people are diagnosed at an early stage to give them the best possible chance of recovery.”
The video – which features three classic horror scenes – presents the general public with the frightening reality of people living with a disease that offers a very low survival rate.
“Having being diagnosed with this disease myself, this scary short video highlights how terrifying it is,” continues Ali. “To be told you have pancreatic cancer is like seeing a scary movie play out before your very eyes.”
“We really hope this campaign will help more people to recognise those early signs and encourage them to visit their GP if they have any concerns.”
Pancreatic Cancer Action is committed working towards earlier diagnosis. The charity is focused on educating the public and medical community as well as funding research. They also campaign for more funding from the government into research, which currently stands at only 1.4 per cent of all research funding.
Ali concludes: “Ultimately we want to see a dramatic increase in the number of people that survive this awful cancer. While no early detection device exists, awareness of the symptoms of pancreatic cancer is key to saving lives.”
For more information, please visit www.pancreaticcanceraction.org.
Distributed by Pressat
