Cancer Church Service
Monday, 16 November 2009
A church service is to be held at Barts on 16 November as part of national Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Week.
The 45 minute, multi-faith service will take place at 6pm at St Barts-the-Less, St Bartholomew's Hospital, West Smithfield.
Organisers say everyone is welcome, including clinicians, researchers, scientists, other hospital staff, patients and their relatives.
Consultant Surgeon, Hemant Kocher, whose work includes both treating patients with pancreatic cancer and researching new treatments, said: "We hope people can spare the time to come along, as this is an important way of making everyone more aware of this deadly disease and its impact.
"There is hope around the corner, with more research underway thanks to the good work of national charities. However more investment is required to make a difference for the patients."
Experts say that pancreatic cancer is difficult to diagnose and many people, once diagnosed, find that they have untreatable terminal cancer.
There is no early detection test and treatment is limited. Because symptoms generally do not appear until the disease is well advanced, the average survival time after diagnosis is as little as six months.
Dirty Dancing film star Patrick Swayze, died of the disease in September aged just 57, just twenty months after receiving his diagnosis.
The charities under the umbrella of Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Group, say the aim of their awareness week is to give people more information about the disease as well as raise money for further research.
Contact:
For more information about the service, please contact Mr Hemant Kocher, Consultant Surgeon, by sending an email to: k.goodey@qmul.ac.uk. More information about pancreatic cancer can be found on the Pancreatic Cancer Awareness website at: http://www.pancreaticcancerawareness.org/