body,td,th { font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; }
And while that's one way of reducing cancer in the younger population, recently - many have noticed a trend where it seems that more young people are being afflicted with cancer. Today, we asked Longsworth if it's a trend she's noticed, and she said it's especially common with women who develop breast and cervical cancer.
Laura Tucker Longsworth, President, Belize Cancer Society
"It's not only a trend locally, it is globally and regional because remember we're connected to the Caribbean so we speak to Latin America and the Caribbean most of the time but we mimic those, that is a phenomenon, it's impactful for us in Belize because we need guidelines that will really move our women to test earlier. For instance breast cancer was a thing for people in their fifties and now our women in their thirties, early thirties are dying of breast cancer. The one that is vexing is cervical cancer because we have the HPV vaccines now and again we want to work with All Saints and the other schools to make sure all the kids have their HPV vaccine because it will certainly go a long way in keeping them healthy and preventing cervical cancer. There's no reason a 25 or a 28 year old woman should be dying of cervical cancer, it is one of the cancers that if caught can be prevented with the vaccine but if caught early can be completely treated and cured."
