A house RESOLUTION

 

to proclaim September 2024 as "Childhood Cancer Awareness Month" in the State of South Carolina and to encourage all citizens, communities, government agencies, private businesses, nonprofit organizations, and the media to increase awareness of what can be done to support the fight against childhood cancer.

 

Whereas, childhood cancer is the number one, disease-related killer of children and teenagers in the United States.  One in five children diagnosed with cancer will die within five years of diagnosis.  In addition, one in 285 American children will be diagnosed with cancer before the age of twenty.  Cancer alone represents nearly half of the top seven causes of death by disease in children before the age of twenty.  The average age of death for a child with cancer is eight, causing a child to lose some seventy years of expected life; and

 

Whereas, childhood cancer is on the rise, with an estimated 17,155 children diagnosed every year, which is forty-seven per day in the United States alone.  Childhood cancers and adult cancers are different, yet the downsized adult-cancer protocols continue to be used on children, many times with devastating effects. The lack of childhood-cancer research has tremendous impact on children and significant costs to society; and

 

Whereas, statistics are expected to show that 1,190 children by age fourteen and 540 adolescents before twenty died from cancer in 2022; and

 

Whereas, the overall incidence of childhood cancer is on the increase, averaging eight-tenths of a percent increase per year since 1975; and

 

Whereas, children who survive for five years after cancer diagnosis experience a fifteen-fold increased risk of developing congestive heart failure and seven-fold higher risk of premature death due to cardiac causes.  Survivors are also at increased risk for recurrence of the original cancer or of a secondary cancer; and

 

Whereas, more than ninety-five percent of childhood-cancer survivors will have a significant health-related issue by the time they are forty-five years of age; these health-related issues are side effects of either the cancer or more commonly, the result of its treatment.  One-third will suffer severe and chronic side effects; one-third will suffer moderate-to-severe health problems; and one-third will suffer slight-to-moderate side effects; and

 

Whereas, the five-year survival rate for DIPG (diffuse intrinsic pontine gliomas) remains almost zero percent.  The median survival for a child diagnosed with DIPG is eight to eleven months; and

 

Whereas, the financial toll that a childhood-cancer diagnosis and treatment can take on a family is devastating.  The average cost associated with childhood cancer for a single child is 833,000 dollars in medical costs and lost parental wages, based upon 2018 figures; and

 

Whereas, many adult cancers can be diagnosed early, yet in eighty percent of children, cancer has already spread to other areas of the body by the time it is diagnosed; and

 

Whereas, it is now understood by the scientific and research community that hazardous exposures in the environment are powerful causes of cancer in children, and such exposures can be reduced or eliminated to decrease the rising number of children diagnosed with cancer; and

 

Whereas, despite these facts, childhood-cancer research is vastly and consistently underfunded.  A total of thirty-four drugs have been approved by the FDA for use in the treatment of childhood cancers.  Twenty-eight of these drugs were originally approved only for adult use.  Today only six drugs that were approved in the first instance for use in cancer treatment for children.  Now, therefore,

 

Be it resolved by the House of Representatives:

 

That the members of the South Carolina House of Representatives, by this resolution, do hereby proclaim September 2024 as Childhood Cancer Awareness Month in the State of South Carolina and encourage all citizens, communities, government agencies, private businesses, nonprofit organizations, and the media to increase awareness of what can be done to support the fight against childhood cancer.

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