A recently conducted survey has found that 56% of adults cannot name the signs of blood cancer.
A charity warned that worryingly some of the symptoms could easily be mistaken for COVID.
The Blood Cancer UK charity stated that the lack of public knowledge of the condition is ‘extremely worrying’.
It’s said that the symptoms can be rather vague and include unexplained weight loss, persistent and unexplained tiredness, and bone pain.
The poll was conducted by Blood Cancer UK questions 2,035 Britons and found that 56 per cent didn’t know any sign of blood cancer.
Head of support services at the charity, Kate Keightley has urged anyone who believes they have persistent symptoms that cannot be explained to ‘urgently’ contact their GP to make an appointment.
Over 40,000 are diagnosed with blood cancer each year in the UK with above 250,000 currently living with the awful disease. Close to 15,000 people die from various forms of blood cancer each year.
The findings that have come a day before the start of Blood Cancer Awareness Month, showed that just 1 per cent of recently polled managed to correctly identify having a fever as a sign of the disease.
Only 3 per cent identified breathlessness as a symptom, raising the charities concerns that this sign, as well as tiredness and fever, could be mistaken for COVID-19 symptoms and remain undiagnosed.
The charity has said awareness of other symptoms has hardly changed since 2018.
Ms Keightley shared: ‘Sadly, symptoms such as fatigue, weight loss and night sweats can sometimes be dismissed or downplayed and the result can be devastating.
‘During the height of the pandemic, we saw far fewer people being diagnosed with blood cancer, and one of the reasons for this could be that some of the symptoms of blood cancer are easily mistaken for Covid.’
‘It’s extremely worrying that public awareness that these could be signs of blood cancer continues to be so low.’
You can find more about the symptoms and signs of Blood Cancer on the Blood Cancer UK website.
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