About Childhood Cancer
In Britain, about 1 in 500 children and young people will develop cancer.
The North of England is a large region covering Cumbria, County Durham, Northumberland, Teesside and Tyneside. Every year in the North of England more than 100 children and young people are diagnosed with cancer and most of them will come to the Paediatric Oncology Unit at the RVI in Newcastle for treatment.
This is more than two children and young people from our region every single week; quite an alarming statistic!
Thanks to the research over the last 25 years and continuous improvement in therapy, almost 75% of children and young people with cancer can now be cured.
Children and young people can be affected by a wide variety of different types of cancer:
- Leukaemia & Lymphoma
- Brain tumours
- Solid tumours, e.g.
Ø Bone tumours (Osteosarcomas, Ewing’s sarcomas)
Ø Kidney tumours (Wilms tumours)
Ø Neuroblastomas
Ø Soft tissue sarcomas
The challenges for the future are:
- To find a cure for those children and young people with high-risk tumours and relapse who disease relapsed after initial treatment. With currently available therapy these patients have a lower chance of cure.
- To target therapy more specifically towards the individual tumours. This will reduce the side effects and burden that our therapy places on our young patients and their families.
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