Listening - Talk on breast cancer.

I'm here today because young girls don't think of things like this its

boys, parties, sex, drugs and drink. But what if I was to say that one in every

nine of you sitting their rite now will develop breast cancer in your lifetime.

Its shocking I know but it’s the truth. My aim today is to make you aware of

breast cancer and on how to reduce the risk of you being one out of them nine

people who develop it.

Each year 39,200 women are newly diagnosed with breast cancer and

although survival rates are improving on average 74 per cent of women are

still alive five years later, too many women will die from this disease. On

average 12,800 women die from breast cancer each year. That's 12,800 women

a year. Age is the biggest risk factor for breast cancer with 80 per cent of

all breast cancers occurring in post-menopausal women. However, you don’t get

away with it that easy, approximately 8,000 pre-menopausal women are also

diagnosed with the disease each year. Britain has one of the highest breast

cancer death rates in the world. But all these statistics cannot begin to

describe the impact that breast cancer has on the lives of those women who are

affected by it and on their families, friends, and colleagues.

Now your all probably sitting there not fully knowing what breast

cancer is. Well here's a quick science lesson. The human body is made up of

billions of cells. Normally these cells grow divide and die in a controlled way

to produce and replace the body’s tissue. If something disrupts this controlled

process a cancer can grow. Breast cancer is caused when the cells that make up

the breast tissue fail to die, instead they endlessly divide and eventually grow

into tumours. Once a ...