Pediatric Cancer
- Cancer is the number one cause of non-accidental death in children and the leading cause of death by disease in children under the age of 15 in the United States
- Over 12,000 children under age 15 years are diagnosed with cancer each year in the United States.
- One in every 330 Americans develops cancer before the age of twenty.
- It remains responsible for more deaths from ages 1-19 than asthma, diabetes, cystic fibrosis and AIDS combined.
- On the average, one in every four elementary schools has a child with cancer. The average high school has two students who are current or former cancer patients.
- Approximately 46 U.S. children and adolescents are diagnosed with cancer every single day.
- At present childhood cancer cannot be prevented and occurs regularly and randomly, sparing no ethnic group, socioeconomic or geographic class.
- The most common types of cancer in children include the leukemias and lymphomas and the tumors of the central and sympathetic nervous systems, soft tissue, bone, and kidney.
- Childhood cancers affect more potential patient-years of life than any other cancer except breast and lung cancer.
- In the United States, the incidence of cancer among adolescents and young adults is increasing at a greater rate than any other age group, except those over 65 years.
- Despite these facts, childhood cancer research is vastly and consistently underfunded. For every six research dollars per patient with AIDS and every one research dollar per patient with breast cancer, a child with cancer receives only 30 cents.
*Statistics from pcfweb.org, www.alexslemonade.org, and cebp.aacrjournals.org/cgi/content/full/13/10/1552.