The Town of Georgetown hopes to promote cancer awareness again this week.
Georgetown is participating in the “Turn the Towns Teal” campaign for a fifth straight year.
Mayor Bill West says it focuses on a particular form of deadly cancer.
“This is making people aware of ovarian cancer...a very deadly cancer that has taken the lives of some of our community members. So what we do is, we have teal ribbons made up and we put them on all the light posts around town,” said West.
West says the biodegradable ribbons coincide with September being National Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month.
West and State Representative Ruth Briggs King will be hanging the teal ribbons on Friday and invite residents to meet them on The Circle at 10 a.m. to help.
And street lights around The Circle and the lights illuminating the Courthouse and the Sussex County Council building will also be turned teal throughout the month of September.
Mayor West says, “And we even take the lights in The Circle and make everything teal there...just to make people aware. And if someone has a loved one who has passed away from this cancer, they can come up and we’ll give them a sharpie and they can put their name on one of the ribbons.”
He says his family has not been touched by ovarian cancer - but his wife just finished chemotherapy for breast cancer and is currently cancer free.
There is currently no reliable diagnostic screening for ovarian cancer and that’s why awareness is so important.
If detected in the early stages, the reported five-year survival rate for ovarian cancer is over 90-percent.
