Medical experts call on sports to reduce melanoma risks | gmaddox
The country’s leading authority on melanoma has called on sporting organisations to move games away from the middle of the day, change training times and provide portable shade structures to prevent a form of skin cancer that is still killing one Australian every six hours.
Calling for urgent action to prevent a deadly cancer: Professor Georgina Long with fellow co-medical director of Melanoma Institute Australia Professor Richard Scolyer and Olympian Cate Campbell at the National Press Club of Australia in Canberra.At a speech at the National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday, they said the country had dropped the ball in preventing a cancer that would kill 16,000 people, leave 350,000 living with the disease and cost the nation $8.
“All of these safety measures are there to protect athletes from injury now but also to prevent them from developing debilitating medical conditions that can even be fatal in the future,” she said.Professor Georgina Long and Professor Richard Scolyer at the National Press Club of Australia in Canberra.Having had discussions with the Australian Cricketers’ Association, he hoped Australian cricket would elevate “the broad-brimmed floppy white hat to the same status as the baggy green”.
“A ‘sunburnt tanlines’ stream on TikTok had more than 200 million views, predominantly teens and young adults showing short videos of their red raw burns,” Long said. “Tanning and sunburn [are] being normalised, glamorised, even trivialised every time you scroll through socials or turn on the TV.