Health experts from Arsenal and Spurs set for Saffron Walden visit to raise awareness of bowel cancer

Thursday, March 14, 2013
10:20 AM

HEALTH ambassadors from two of Britain’s biggest Premier League football clubs will be in Saffron Walden later this week in a bid to heighten awareness of bowel cancer.

The Tottenham Hotspur Foundation and Arsenal in the Community, in partnership with the NHS, will give a presentation on the disease at the Lord Butler Leisure Centr, on Peaslands Road, tomorrow (March 15).

They will be handing out literature about bowel cancer to centre users from midday onwards and will also be out and about in Saffron Walden town centre.

At 2pm they will give a presentation on how to spot the signs and symptoms of the killer disease – which claimed the life of England World Cup winning legend Bobby Moore in 1993 - and how to use the NHS bowel cancer screening kits.

They will also give advice on healthy eating and what we can all do to prevent the development of bowel cancer.

Bowel cancer is the UK’s second biggest cancer killer, with 41,000 people diagnosed with it each year.

The disease claims a life every half an hour- over 16,000 people a year but, if diagnosed early, over 90 per cent of bowel cancer cases can be treated successfully.

Most bowel cancer cases are in the over 50s, however the number of cases of bowel cancer in younger people is increasing rapidly, particularly in the under-30s which has increased by 120 per cent in the last decade.