Merck Korea hosted an event on March 18 celebrating the March, which is the colorectal cancer awareness month.
This event was held as a part of Merck Korea’s ‘Colorectal cancer awareness campaign’, for the month of improving awareness of colorectal cancer designated by the Global Colon Cancer Association (GCCA).
Michael Grund, Managing Director of Merck Korea, said about this campaign that “Through the diverse campaign program, Merck takes an effort to employees to improve the awareness of colorectal cancer, externally the patients, their families, medical experts, and the general people have proper information and awareness about the colorectal cancer as well as alerting people to dangerousness about the disease.
At Merck’s ‘Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month Campaign’, which is held worldwide, the ‘Dress in blue day event(7th)’ that employees wear clothes or have belongings in blue symbolizing ‘the month of improving the awareness of colorectal cancer’ was held. Merck also held the quiz event(11th) to deliver the right information including prevention, diagnosis and treatment of colorectal cancer through healthy lifestyle.
The lecture to improve awareness of colorectal cancer was focused on improving the awareness and arouses people’s attention regarding colorectal cancer, and delivering the diverse information about the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of colorectal cancer including RAS biomarker test. RAS biomarker test is the method that easily finds out the gene in the metastatic colorectal cancer(mCRC) tumor. This test is expected to play very important role in diagnosing colorectal cancer by helping doctors choose the best treatment method.
Uloff Muenster, General Manager of Biopharma Division, emphasized “It is really meaningful to launch the campaign in South Korea where the country has ranked top third of colorectal cancer disease rate.” He also said that “We will make significant efforts not only to do the campaign for the company itself, but also to expand the campaign to various regions, further throughout the Korean society in order to lower the colorectal cancer disease rate.”
South Korea ranks top in the colorectal cancer disease rate in Asian countries, and No. 3 in the world. Very careful attention is required in Colorectal cancer as the number of colorectal cancer is on a rising trend with 5.2% increase every year. Apart from genetic factor, the causes of colorectal cancer are peoples’ poor eating habits and lack of physical activities.
