North West Cancer Research (NWCR) will be supporting the fifth annual Liverpool Pride festival this weekend Saturday 2nd August, by hitting the streets of the city and talking to festival goers and passers-by to help promote a potentially lifesaving message about cancer.

Under the banner of ‘Cancer Doesn’t Discriminate’ the NWCR team who are based in Liverpool, will fully embrace this year’s festival theme of ‘Glamorous Fairy-tales’ donning a series of Alice In Wonderland inspired costumes. Alice and her friends hope to raise awareness of the early signs and symptoms of cancer and encourage people of Merseyside to visit their GP if they have any concerns.

The North West has some of the highest cancer incidence and mortality figures in the UK. In Liverpool around 4,000 people every year are told they have cancer and each year around 1400 people in the region die from cancer related illnesses. It is the city’s biggest single cause of death.

Anne Jackson, CEO at NWCR said:

“Our message for festival goers is that cancer doesn’t discriminate, it has the ability to affect us all.

“Liverpool unfortunately has some of the highest cancer incidence rates in the country, which is why it is important to raise awareness of cancer and encourage people to talk more about any symptoms or worries they may have, which will hopefully save lives.

“Today we are twice as likely to survive cancer than we were 40 years ago and this is partly down to us being more aware, but also due to research such as that which we support at NWCR. Research has given us a better understanding of cancer, how to prevent it, how to diagnose it and how to treat it.

“We are really looking forward to taking our lifesaving message to Liverpool Pride this year and it will be a fun way for us to raise awareness of cancer among our LGBT community and the wider people of Liverpool.”

NWCR is the leading regional charity that raises money to achieve a better understanding of cancer and directly benefits people living in the North West. To date it has raised over £28million to fund cancer research projects in the North West of England and North Wales.

The charity prides itself on only backing the very highest standards of research ensuring the best value for all donations. It’s last round of research grants totalled almost £1million. NWCR fund research at University of Liverpool, Lancaster University and University of Bangor.