By Ashleigh Fielding | posted on February 14, 2020
A TELEVISION commercial featuring GPs from regional WA is among a number of Cancer Council WA public health campaigns driving home the ‘Find Cancer Early’ message.
Cancer Council WA Great Southern Regional Education Officer Bruce Beamish said while new data showed the Find Cancer Early messages were starting to show some impact, there was still a long way to go in improving early detection of cancer.
“The campaign is prompting people to take action, and our recent evaluation data reveals that more than a third of regional viewers took action as a result of seeing or hearing the Find Cancer Early advertisements,” he said
“Encouragingly, we’ve seen a 61 per cent increase from 2018 in people taking action within 12 weeks of seeing the campaign, but we’d still like to see people taking earlier action rather than waiting up to 12 weeks.”
Prostate, breast, skin, bowel and lung comprise almost 60 per cent of all cancer diagnoses.
Albany-based GP Dr Keerthana Muthurangan said she is never too busy to discuss important issues.
“No question is silly, weird or odd, especially if it is about possible cancer symptoms,” she said.
“It’s normal to be scared when you want to know if you could have cancer.
“We are here to provide you non-judgmental counselling and management.”
Mr Beamish said the aim of the Rural Doctors Bathroom campaign and other Find Cancer Early campaign materials was to increase awareness of the symptoms of the five most common cancers and motivate people to seek medical advice early on in WA.
The advertising campaign began on Sunday and will run for 13 weeks across the state.
For more information on Find Cancer Early, visit findcancerearly.com.au
