September is National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, and for a few days, the Harbor Bridge will be lit up in gold which is the color linked to childhood cancer awareness ribbons.
The Harbor Bridge will be lit up in gold from Friday, September 20 to Tuesday, September 24. Driscoll Children’s Hospital’s Cancer & Blood Disorders Center is sponsoring the event. On Monday, several patients and staff members have been wearing gold clothing and ribbons. One cancer patient, Jeremiah Clemons, painted the words "Go Gold" on his head.
According to a press release from the hospital, the color gold symbolizes how precious children are and the resiliency of childhood cancer patients. The international awareness symbol for childhood cancer is the gold ribbon. Unlike other awareness ribbons which symbolize one specific disease, the gold childhood cancer ribbon stands for dozens of diseases.
The release goes on to say that childhood cancer is the number 1 cause of death from disease in children in the U.S. Each year, more than 15,000 children are diagnosed with cancer. Fifty years ago, childhood cancer was virtually incurable, but the overall survival rate for childhood cancer is now 80 percent. There are currently 390,000 childhood cancer survivors in the U.S. and that number continues to rise.
