Childhood Cancer Awareness Month runs throughout September and aims to make a difference to treatment, research and early diagnosis of treatment.

Ten children are diagnosed with cancer in the UK every day – that's almost 4,000 children and young people every year.

A quarter of those diagnosed will not survive treatment and the vast majority can be left with lifelong side effects. Cancer is the leading cause of death from disease in children aged between one and 14 years old in the UK.

Children With Cancer UK describes it as "the country's biggest childhood killer" and say one child in 500 will develop some form of cancer by the age of 14.

Boys are more likely than girls to develop cancer and they are more than twice as likely to develop lymphomas.

In Britain, childhood cancer incidence rates increased by 38% between 1966 and 2000, but some of this increase is thought to be due to improvements in diagnosis and registration.

Iconic buildings across the UK will glow gold this month to help raise awareness of childhood cancer .

What are the symptoms?

  • Unexplained weight loss

  • Headaches often with early morning vomiting

  • Increased swelling or persistent pain in joints, bones, back and legs

  • Lumps or masses

  • Excessive bruising

  • Bleeding or rash

  • Constant infections and tiredness

Devastated father tells of the moment his family's lives were changed forever when his son Saul was diagnosed with cancer

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The most common childhood cancer is leukaemia, which accounts for almost one third of cases. Cancers of the brain and spinal cord (CNS tumours) are the next most common, accounting for one quarter of all cases.

Some types of cancer – including embryonal tumours (such as neuroblastoma, retinoblastoma and Wilms tumour) and acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) - occur most commonly in the under-fives.

Other cancers, such as bone tumours, are very rare among younger children, increasing in incidence with age and peaking in adolescence.

Around 250 children aged up to 14 years lose their lives to cancer every year in the UK.

The average five year survival rate, across all childhood cancer types is 82 per cent.

It is estimated that there are more than 35,000 survivors of childhood cancer alive in the UK. The number is growing by around 1,300 per year.