H.or lost my father at 51 to melanoma and four years ago I founded the MelanomaDay to donate thousands of free dermatological visits. An initiative that gives hope to many other people by offering free visits, scholarships and making people aware of the importance of preventing Melanoma.
How Melanoma is bornDay
I never accepted the loss of my father, after his death I felt I wanted to continue to take care of him, to fight the disease that had taken him from me. Dad died on March 20, exactly the day after Father’s Day. I wanted to found MelanomaDay to give an extra Father’s Day (and Mother’s Day) to all parents.
The importance of early diagnosis
The melanoma is a terrible tumor if it is not caught in time, but making an early diagnosis is simple, just a dermatological visit, not at all invasive: the specialist observes the whole body with a kind of magnifying glass, the dermatoscope, which allows him to see our moles and lesions very well. Early diagnosis can really save lives, in fact a melanoma caught in the early stages has an excellent prognosis, unfortunately the same thing cannot be said when the disease is advanced.
What the Melanoma Association doesDay
MelanomaDay is an event that I organize every year thanks to theMelanoma AssociationDay and which rests on three fundamental pillars: training, prevention and research incentives.
Let’s start from the first point by organizing training sessions for General Practitioners and professionals who are in contact with the skin so that they recognize suspicious dermatological lesions. Furthermore, we offer hundreds of free dermatological screenings to the general public to promote good prevention practice. Finally, with the Silvio Pistore Degree Awardwhich we donate to Sergio Chimenti Dermatological School, we support young doctors, dermatology specialists and doctoral students who are involved in research on melanoma. “
The results of the screening
I can say with satisfaction that we have given several extra mum and dad holidays to the people who came to MelanomaDay. Over the years both through the visits that we have directly offered to our event, and through the awareness-raising activity that we carry out every day on the instagram and facebook profiles (@gianlucapistore and @melanoma_day) we receive testimonies of people who have managed to have an early diagnosis thanks to the awareness we have done.
Goals for the future
I dream that MelanomaDay becomes a national day of sensitization on melanoma e that institutions invest in prevention. Something is already moving, our event has the patronage of Sidemast, the Italian dermatology company, of theADOI, the Italian hospital dermatologists association andIMI, the Italian melanoma intergroup. In our own small way, with our strength alone, we have shown that one proper communication can make a difference for many people. I hope the institutions invest more in this.
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