Nation stands up for prostate cancer awareness
Thursday 24 September 2009, 9:23AM
By BlueSeptember
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Tomorrow is Blue Friday and nationwide landmarks and workplaces are turning blue to raise funds for prostate cancer awareness.
The timing of support for the cause is ideal, as the Health Select Committee convenes under Dr Paul Hutchison to review the literature surrounding the government’s decision in 2004 not to screen for Prostate Cancer.
Tomorrow, for only the second time ever, the flag poles at Parliament will be adorned in support of a charity. Two distinctive blue flags with the white koru logo of Blue September will be raised for Blue Friday in the Parliamentary Forecourt, alongside the New Zealand ensign.
The public is invited to Te Papa Plaza at 1230 this Friday to observe two minutes of silence in remembrance of those who succumb to Prostate Cancer. People will be invited to take up one of 600 blue crosses, representing the toll the disease takes yearly on fathers, brothers, sons and friends.
Landmarks going blue up and down the country include: the Auckland Sky Tower; the Hamilton Traffic Bridge; the Tom Parker foundation in Napier; the Pig & Whistle in Rotorua, the Hastings Central Water Fountain, Clock Tower and Opera House; the Palmerston North Clock Tower; the Wanganui Water Tower; the Christchurch Art Gallery and the Invercargill Water Tower.
In addition, workplaces all over the country, including a number of bars and pubs in these cities and in New Plymouth, Dunedin and Tauranga are getting behind the cause and holding Blue Friday themed evenings to raise money for Blue September.
Prostate Cancer often occurs without symptoms therefore awareness and checks are essential. One Otago University study recently estimated that in the Wellington region alone, 80% of Maori men with the early stages of the disease would not know they had it.