Portsmouth organisations dress in pink for breast cancer awareness day

Outpatients reception girls at Spire Portsmouth Hospital in Havant, from left,

Pauline Hobbs, Debs Bacon, Sarah King as a Pink Power Ranger, Melissa Perris, Kerry Murch, Hazel Gilbert — Outpatients reception girls at Spire Portsmouth Hospital in Havant, from left, Pauline Hobbs, Debs Bacon, Sarah King as a Pink Power Ranger, Melissa Perris, Kerry Murch, Hazel Gilbert

Yesterday marked Breast Cancer Now’s national Wear It Pink campaign and across the Portsmouth area organisations donned the colour to raise cash.

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and Wear It Pink is one of the biggest fundraisers.

Staff from Spire Portsmouth Hospital, in Havant, dressed in tutus and pink T-shirts. They also had a pink raffle and the physiotherapy team held different sporting challenges.

Staff from Stagecoach in Portsmouth took part in Wear It Pink

Desi Ilieva, from the marketing team, said: ‘At the hospital, we like to support lots of charity events and Wear It Pink was one which sounded fun and is for an amazing cause. Everyone made such a good effort to dress in pink which was great to see. We were pleased seeing all the staff taking part.

‘We had a lot going on alongside wearing pink such as the raffle, pilates and pink buckets for donations.’

This is the second year the hospital, in Bartons Road, has taken part and Desi said the event had grown. It raised £700.

‘Hopefully we will do it again next year and raise even more money,’ she added.

Finance and commercial manager Petri Van Aarde, left, andhead of NHS business Nitin Chavda

Stagecoach in Portsmouth also took part. The bus firm has a big, pink double-decker for Cancer Research UK and their employees wore pink shirts and ties to raise cash.

Last week, the Raising and Giving Society from the University of Portsmouth dressed in pink. It was hoping to raise £2,000 with its Turn Pompey Pink campaign.

Havant-based company Action Coach dressed in pink on Wednesday. They also had a cake sale and a raffle to raise money.

Employee Katarina Karaskova said: ‘This is the first time we have taken part but it is something we would like to do again.’

Healthcare assistant Deb Stone and hospital engineer Gary West

The News turned pink yesterday to highlight that only 52 per cent of the women invited for potentially life-saving breast screenings to detect signs of cancer are going to their appointments.

In the Portsmouth area, between April 2015 and March this year, out of the 12,116 women invited for screenings by Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust, only 6,400 attended.

Calls have been made for this to change as mammograms can pick up changes in breasts which women might not notice. As well as going to screenings, women are also being encouraged to check themselves regularly.