HATS off to Carrie Bickmore.
Actually, if you want to be more correct, that probably should read: Hats on for Carrie Bickmore.
The television host has used her Gold Logie win to highlight the devastating impacts of brain cancer and she did it in a way that guaranteed the issue would get maximum coverage.
Ms Bickmore, who was glamorously attired for the Logies ceremony, surprised the audience when she pulled out a blue beanie and whacked it over her own head.
Why a beanie? Ms Bickmore’s late husband Greg Lange apparently favoured beanies while he was fighting his own battle with brain cancer.
“Everyone thinks it is a rare form of cancer, it is not,” Bickmore told the audience.
“In 2010, my husband Greg was one of the unlucky ones and after a long, long, long, long battle he died from brain cancer.”
Ms Bickmore’s moves to raise the profile of brain cancer is made even more welcome after the discrediting of so-called “wellness blogger” Belle Gibson, who has recently admitted to faking a brain tumour.
According to the Cancer Council of NSW, brain cancer receives very little research funding.
The Cancer Council said “worryingly little is known about this disease, other than some devastating statistics”:
- Not only is brain cancer the leading cause of cancer death for young people under the age of 39 and children under 10, it carries the highest financial burden.
- In its malignant form it is almost 100 per cent fatal.
- It is one of the most under-studied of all cancers.
- Around 1600 people a year will be diagnosed with brain cancer in Australia and about 1200 will die.
- One person is diagnosed with brain cancer every six hours in Australia, every eight hours one will pass away.
Yet all is not bad news. The Cancer Council says there are research projects under way, among them a ground-breaking study it is funding which will recruit 800 brain cancer patients and 800 healthy family members from across Australia to determine the combination of lifestyle and genetic factors that cause brain cancer.
So how about it then, let’s join Ms Bickmore and whack on a beanie to raise awareness of this rotten killer.
