Coutts Woman

Forewarned is forearmed

Shhhhh…. it’s ovarian cancer awareness month.  And while Ovarian Cancer Action, (OCA), would like women to shout about this, they’re facing an up hill struggle. But helping to boost awareness of the disease and increasing diagnosis will only improve survival rates. And when you consider it’s the fourth commonest cancer amongst women there’s every reason to be very vocal about it.

Unlike breast cancer, many women still feel awkward talking about ovarian cancer.  Allyson Kaye, chair of OCA, explains, “Women think it has gynaecological symptoms when in the main, it doesn’t.  They link it to having some connection to their femininity or that it has sexual connotations, and so find it very difficult to talk about.” 

Add to that research which states GPs feel uncomfortable giving the internal examination that helps diagnose the disease, and it goes someway to explaining why ovarian cancer doesn’t get diagnosed earlier.

Today, 70 per cent of the women diagnosed with ovarian cancer die from it.  It was this statistic that prompted Kaye to take over the running of OCA in 2000. 

She says, “I knew that in the UK we had one of the worst records in the world for ovarian cancer and there was so little awareness of that fact here. I could see the results that breast cancer charities were achieving by putting their message out there, but women were still finding it really difficult to talk about ovarian cancer.” 

Kaye had a long association with the charity before that. OCA started out as a small trust set up by her father 22 years ago, shortly after her mother died of the disease.  The trust funded medical professionals from around the world to get together and discuss ovarian cancer and their research.

“This was before the Internet, and my father’s idea was to help co-ordinate their research and get all their minds thinking together to come up with a better result and ensure women across the world got the best treatment.”

In 2000, OCA’s future was in question. Kaye’s father had re-married and, had finally decided he wanted to move on. He told her he was considering closing the charity.

Kaye explains, “I was nearing 40 and realised if I didn’t do something about these statistics, and the silence surrounding the disease, no one would. I also knew so much about ovarian cancer and the charity from going to the international meetings, that I decided to take it over.”

“Women think it has gynaecological symptoms when in the main, it doesn’t.  They link it to having some connection to their femininity or that it has sexual connotations, and so find it very difficult to talk about,” explains Allyson Kaye.

She had a clear idea of what she wanted to achieve. She set herself three goals – to raise awareness, fund research and give women a voice.

With funding research, Kaye continued the work her father had started.  “We’re very much about funding the right sort of research, the type that gives women results, not just clever ideology.  That is why we do it collaboratively. We don’t just fund one institute, but get several institutes together and try to get them to share the way they do research and the way they hold data.  Because sometimes the data can be important, even if the research itself wasn’t.”

On her other two goals, Kaye felt even more passionate, particularly considering she had an uphill struggle ahead of her.  “Awareness and a voice for ovarian cancer continue to be the two things that are stopping women from getting diagnosed earlier, something which could actually save their lives and bring our survival rates from 30 per cent to our target of 90 per cent. 

“To do this, we need women to be aware of the symptoms, and feel able to talk about it.  We also need GPs to be more aware of it so that they can diagnose it earlier,” insists Kaye.

Now in her seventh year chairing the charity, Kaye has come some way.  As well as hosting the annual Love Art event, which raises vast sums of money for the charity through auctioning high profile art, she has a number of celebrities such as Jo Brand and Gwyneth Strong fronting the OCA campaign. The aim, to give OCA and women with ovarian cancer a voice and raise awareness of the disease.

“We’re a strategic charity, as well as a charity which raises awareness, and although we’ve come a long way, we’ve still some way to go before we hit that 90 per cent,” she concludes.

Ovarian cancer symptoms

Diagnosis is made difficult because symptoms are often similar to more common, less serious conditions. New research has shown women who have any one of the following symptoms more than 12 days a month should be checked out for ovarian cancer:

• feeling full persistently
• difficulty eating
• abdominal pain
• pelvic pain
• bloating

If any of these symptoms persist for several weeks you should contact your GP and mention ovarian cancer.  These symptoms are also found in many less serious conditions.

March is ovarian cancer awareness month and OCA has PANTS, (Positive Action Now Targeting Survival), fundraising packs available.  The packs include information on awareness and fundraising. For more information on Ovarian Cancer Action, visit www.ovarian.org.uk or call 020 8238 7605.