With a goal of rais­ing US$1 mil­lion to­wards pan­cre­at­ic can­cer re­search, Na­tal­ie Sab­ga founder of the John E Sab­ga Foun­da­tion for Pan­cre­at­ic Can­cer is well on the way to mak­ing it hap­pen.

Al­ready Sab­ga has raised US$800,000 and that mon­ey has been sent to doc­tors and the med­ical fra­ter­ni­ty to fund their re­spec­tive re­search.

Sab­ga was speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at Thurs­day’s sec­ond an­nu­al ‘Pur­ple Trot—A Glow in the Dark’ walk around the Queens Park Sa­van­nah in Port-of-Spain where scores turned out de­spite the in­clement weath­er. The walk was aimed at bring­ing aware­ness to pan­cre­at­ic can­cer. Thurs­day was al­so World Pan­cre­at­ic Can­cer Aware­ness Day.

“This is a can­cer that is on the rise glob­al­ly and it has the high­est mor­tal­i­ty rate of all can­cers. So we re­al­ly want to bring aware­ness to peo­ple and try to get them to un­der­stand the ear­ly signs and symp­toms and the risk fac­tors so that they can be aware of their own health and their own body and no­tice when things change that they must see a doc­tor,” Sab­ga said.

Sab­ga’s hus­band, John E Sab­ga died from pan­cre­at­ic can­cer just over six years ago and los­ing him has prompt­ed Sab­ga to be a ded­i­cat­ed ad­vo­cate to not on­ly help those bat­tling the dis­ease but find­ing a cure.

“Be­sides keep­ing in T&T some of the US$800,000 in funds that we raised so far for help­ing our cit­i­zens, we have sent out to some of the doc­tors that we have brought to Trinidad to teach our doc­tors and our med­ical fra­ter­ni­ty for their re­search. So we have two Trinida­di­ans who do a lot of re­search. We help fund their re­search be­cause pan­creas can­cer re­search is go­ing to be the key that will get us to bet­ter ther­a­pies and bet­ter op­tions for ear­ly de­tec­tion tests. Right now they’re work­ing on a blood test so this is the whole key to the pur­pose of re­search,” Sab­ga ex­plained.

“And a lot of peo­ple in Trinidad don’t un­der­stand the need and the un­der­stand­ing of re­search but if you look at breast can­cer 25 years ago it was a death sen­tence but it is no longer that so why did that hap­pen? Women de­mand­ed bet­ter, they start­ed walk­ing and run­ning and every­body knows what the pink rib­bon is. But be­cause pan­creas can­cer is so dev­as­tat­ing that fam­i­lies are just so dev­as­tat­ed, when they lose their loved ones they don’t want to hear about this any­more. But we need to do for pan­creas can­cer what women did for breast can­cer be­cause it’s go­ing to be the sec­ond lead­ing cause of can­cer deaths pret­ty soon glob­al­ly af­ter lung be­cause it is so dead­ly. Not as many peo­ple would get pan­creas but the mor­tal­i­ty rate is very high,” she added.

Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, who led the walk, praised Sab­ga for her ad­vo­ca­cy in rais­ing pan­cre­at­ic can­cer aware­ness.