MORE than half the state's secondary schools do not have a policy that forces their students to wear hats during outdoor activity.

 

The Cancer Council is urging all schools to take up the SunSmart message and insist that students wear hats if they want to play outside in the sun.

 

The council is pleased 84 per cent of primary schools have an adequate policy but is now targeting high schools to persuade them to reinforce the good habits established in earlier years. The plea comes as high school students continue to ignore the warnings as another hot summer begins. Read the Advertiser story online.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CANCER survivors feel abandoned after treatment, experts say. More people, including children, are living longer after cancer but they still suffer physical, psychological and social after-effects.

Today, the Cancer Council will release the latest Cancer Forum, the Clinical Oncological Society of Australia's journal, which contains articles on the problems facing cancer survivors. Read the Advertiser story online.

A NANOTECHNOLOGY therapy that attacks cancer with a "stealth smart bomb" is to begin patient trials next year in the first clinical test of a pioneering approach to medicine. The nanoparticle, which targets tumour cells while evading the body's immune system, promises to deliver larger and more effective doses of drugs to cancers while sparing patients many of the distressing side-effects of chemotherapy.

Animal studies have indicated that the treatment can shrink tumours "essentially to zero", while being better tolerated than conventional cancer treatments. Read the Australian story online.

FIVE months after the national bowel cancer screening program was cancelled when it was found almost half a million people had been given faulty home test kits, the Federal Government is ready to issue new tests.

But doctors fear public and professional confidence in the program has been damaged beyond repair. More than 457,000 people were sent kits between December and May before it was found the Japanese manufacturers, Fujirebio Diagnostics, had used a faulty solution which degraded red blood cells in warm weather. Read the Sydney Morning Herald story.

THE number of Australian women diagnosed with breast cancer annually has more than doubled over the past 25 years, but fewer are dying from the disease.

The most comprehensive review of breast cancer to date, released by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare and the National Breast and Ovarian Cancer Centre, also found that indigenous women are significantly less likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer.

However, poor access to healthcare and a reluctance to follow up on treatment meant those indigenous women diagnosed with the disease were less likely to survive. Read the Australian story online.

A REPORT that reveals the $31 billion social cost of smoking to the Australian economy is a mandate for tobacco taxes to be hiked, health groups say.

The Cancer Council of Western Australia today released what it says is the first independent analysis of economic arguments put forward by the tobacco industry. The report, prepared by two health economists, assessed the economic impact of both the tobacco industry and public health measures aimed at reducing tobacco use. Read the Advertiser story online.

MORE than 13,000 people are likely to be waiting for a colonoscopy to investigate a positive initial test for bowel cancer, as a restarted national screening program deals with a large backlog of patients.

The National Bowel Cancer Screening Program has been on hold because of a debacle caused by the recall of thousands of potentially faulty testing kits.

The home testing kits, which were distributed from January last year as part of the National Bowel Cancer Screening program, were sent to those aged 50, 55 and 65 years old. Nearly half a million kits distributed since last December had to be recalled when a fault was discovered that meant they were returning too many negative results. Read the Australian story.