Stats About
--Childhood
-----Cancer

Cancer in infants, children, teenagers, and young adults is more common than most people realize:

• On average, one in every four elementary schools has a child with cancer. The average high school has two students who are current or former cancer patients.
  
  
• Cancer in childhood occurs regularly, randomly, and spares no ethnic group, socioeconomic class, or geographic region.
  
  
• The causes of most childhood cancers are unknown.
  
  
• At present, childhood cancer cannot be prevented.

Progress in treating childhood cancer has been dramatic:

• Cancer is the most curable chronic disease of childhood.
  
  
• If the current rate of progress continues, due to improved funding of research, the cure rate for cancers diagnosed prior to age 20 can approach 85 percent.
  
  
• Currently, more than one out of every 900 people in the United States between ages 20 and 45 are survivors of childhood cancer.

Source: National Childhood Cancer Foundation