Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest tower, will be lit up in pink this week to raise awareness and funds to fight breast cancer, its developers said today.
The lights will be turned on tomorrow and for the next two days, and then on the same days in the following weeks, to mark Pink October, an annual breast cancer awareness month, Emaar Properties said. Visitors to Burj Khalifa, which stands 828 metres (2,700 feet) high, “are invited to wear pink, to show their support to the cause”, it said in a statement.
One Emirati dirham (USD 0.27) of all October sales in the shops of the tower, which has become a tourist attraction since opening in 2010, will go towards the Al-Jalila Foundation. The charity founded by Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin.
Rashid al-Maktoum supports an initiative to promote the early detection of breast cancer, facilitate medical treatment and fund local research on the disease.
Breast cancer is the most common form of cancer in women worldwide. It is also the second deadliest form of the disease in women, after lung cancer. On Monday, Dubai began construction work on a skyscraper dubbed The Tower that will stand even higher than Burj Khalifa when completed in 2020.
In India, over 1,50,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer every year -a staggering number that has overtaken cervical cancer to become the most common cancer affecting women in India. With 70,000 deaths getting reported every year, a woman succumbs to breast cancer every ten minutes in the country.
Due to a lack of awareness (even in metro cities), the absence of a nationwide, population-based breast cancer screening programme and more than 60 per cent of breast cancers getting detected at an advanced stage, most cancer patients succumb to the disease within a year of getting diagnosed. Several myths surround breast cancer, which makes it tough to beat the disease.
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