In the UK, mouth cancer kills more people than testicular or cervical cancer put together. One person is dying every five hours from mouth cancer.
Award winning local dental hygienist, Christina Chatfield is aiming to draw attention to the issue and is walking from Kirriemore in Scotland to Brighton to raise awareness of mouth cancer and to widen access to dental care. She will be raising money for the British Dental Health Foundation, Your Smile and Mouth Cancer Action Month charities.
Actor Steve Speirs is a patient of Christina and is supporting her campaign.
Steve said:
“I’m backing this campaign as I was genuinely staggered to hear that more people die of mouth cancer than cervical and testicular cancer together. This sort of ignorance has to be addressed. We can’t rely upon “word of mouth”, so lets get the word of the mouth out there! Awareness of the fact may encourage someone to regularly visit their dentist and may indeed mean that lives can be saved.”
Her campaign will be launched with a reception at Emporium Art Venue at 88 London Road, on November 12 from 6pm.
Most people are diagnosed at stage 4 mouth cancer due to late detection as they have not seen a dental professional until too late, many through fear and anxiety. Why is that?
Until May this year, people who wanted to see a dental hygenist had to go to their dentist and many were afraid to do so.
After years of campaigning Direct Access was introduced in May this year allowing people to go direct to a dental hygienist without visiting a dentist first.
The law changed on May 1, but who knows about it? None of the local media except Juice FM and Gscene magazine covered this story. Hopefully by June 19 more people will have heard about this change in the law giving them more choice and more options from whom they access dental health care.
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