Terry Fox Run makes HCMC comeback

By Nguyen Quy   November 1, 2019 | 01:26 am PT
Terry Fox Run makes HCMC comeback
Participants at the 2018 Terry Fox Run Vietnam in District 7, Ho Chi Minh City. Photo courtesy of Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam.
The annual Terry Fox Run, which aims to raise money for cancer research, will return to HCMC’s District 7 on November 17.

The five-kilometer run will begin on Tan Trao Street in Phu My Hung urban area, home to a large expat community, and loop through Tan Phu, No. 23, and Nguyen Luong Bang Streets before again finishing at the end of Tan Trao.

Participants can register for the run for VND200,000 ($8.62) for an individual and VND300,000 ($12.95) for a team via the run's website.

Last year, the event raised VND2.8 billion ($121,012) for cancer research in Vietnam, organizers said.

Organized by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam in partnership with the Consulate General of Canada in Ho Chi Minh City, the charity run honors Terry Fox’s stringent efforts and keep alive his dream of finding a cure for cancer.

Fox grew up near Vancouver, British Columbia on Canada’s west coast. As an active teenager engaged in various sports, he was diagnosed with bone cancer when he was 18 years old, forcing him to have his right leg amputated in 1977.

While in hospital, he  was so touched by the suffering of other cancer patients, many of them young children, that he decided to run across Canada to raise money for cancer research. After 143 days and 5,373 kilometers, he was forced to stop running outside Thunder Bay, Ontario because his cancer had returned. He on June 28, 1981, at the age 22.

The Terry Fox Run is actively organized in more than 30 countries and in thousands of locations in Canada and the U.S. To date, over $750 million has been raised worldwide for cancer research in Terry Fox’s name.

Almost 115,000 Vietnamese died of cancer last year, or over 300 a day in 2018, said Tran Van Thuan, director of Hanoi's K Hospital, one of the biggest in Vietnam and specializing in cancer treatment, citing figures collected by the World Health Organization’s Global Cancer Observatory last April.

 
 
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