HeadSmart campaigner Sacha Langton-Gilks, who lost her 17 year old son David (known as DD) to a late brain tumour diagnosis, explains: “The risk of a child developing a brain tumour is the same as a child developing meningitis but awareness of brain tumour symptoms is extremely low in both the health profession and the general public.
“Despite the fact that brain tumours are the biggest cancer killer of children and young people aged 2 – 24 years in the UK, there is no public money going into raising awareness. This is why the support of companies like VoIP Unlimited is so vital; we simply couldn’t do it without them,” she said.
VoIP Unlimited staff met Sacha at the firm’s offices in Poole to hear more about her son DD’s story before signing up to pledge their support. As well as planning a series of employee fundraisers over the coming year staff will also be spreading the word with HeadSmart’s pocket-sized brain tumour symptom cards. A mobile friendly version of which is available by texting SMART to 81400.
Mark Pillow, managing director of VoIP Unlimited, said: “VoIP Unlimited is determined to help HeadSmart further reduce the diagnosis time for children with brain tumours. Since June 2011 the campaign has helped significantly lower the UK’s diagnosis time, currently at 6.7 weeks, but we are still far behind other countries; Poland, for example, being under five weeks. We want to help them get these diagnosis times down to be on a par with, or better than, the rest of the world.”