Pediatric Brain Tumors draw World attention

World attention to the plight of pediatric tumors and the lack of treatment development has drawn support from leading neurosurgeons and reasearch organisations. Supporting a call by International Brain Tumor Alliance (IBTA) for the Swiss-based International Union Against Cancer (UICC) to give greater prominence in its World Cancer Day activities, to be held on February 4, 2009, to brain tumors and the problems they cause, constituting one of the leading causes of cancer death among children.
IBTA chair Denis Strangman (Australia) said that worldwide roughly 200,000 people each year develop a malignant primary brain tumor, although not comparable with a wider range of cancers, there was no cure at present and little in way of effective treatments.
Expressing support for IBTA's letter, Dr.Larry Kun, chair of US.Pediatric Brain Tumor Consortium, descrtibed childhood brain tumors as "perhaps the most vexing area of pediatric oncology".
Describing childhood brain tumors as a most underdeserving area of cancer research, Mike Traynor, chair of Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation, US , said it requires a philanthropic community to provide significant funds to bring an understanding of the disease.
Others to lend their support came from Prof. Martin van den Bent, Holland; Prof.David Walker, Nottingham,UK.; Prof. Victor Levin, MD Anderson Cancer Centre, Texas, and Matt Pitt, chair of newly established Brain Tumor Alliance Australia, who sumed up the feelings of many, when he said "I find it hard to convey the devastating impact of brain tumors on a peron's life. It is truely an insidious disease; funding for research and health care needs to acknowledge and deal with the wide ranging impact of brain tumors". Geoff.