Although, a breast cancer diagnosis is not an annual event, calling attention and awareness to the disease is.

October, which is known as breast cancer awareness month, is winding down and with that most will put away all of the pink away for another year.

In Chambers County, there have been several fundraising opportunities, including our own special section that published on Oct. 19. For the first time, 10 percent of our advertising sales in this section were donated to a breast cancer charity.

However, no charity event was larger than what Renasant Bank put together by “arresting” some of the county’s most prominent figures and setting a bail amount.

With a goal of $2,500, Renasant Bank’s Nancy Holland said the Valley branch has collected more than $7,500 with several days still left to collect. That is an incredible number for this area and everyone who donated and participated should be commended.

Nancy said it best: “We might be small, but our hearts are big, and we are awesome.”

Just because the pink fountain will turn back to white, all the pink attire goes back in the closet and the makeshift jail goes back into a storage shed, it does not mean we should stop calling attention to this disease.

Outside of October, many of us don’t think about how many people breast cancer effects on a regular basis unless it is at the forefront of our minds.

According to breastcancer.org, one in eight women (about 12 percent) will develop invasive breast cancer over the course of her lifetime and an estimated 268,000 new cases are expected to be diagnosed in women in the United States this year. 

Plus, nearly 63,000 new cases of non-invasive breast cancer are expected to be diagnosed.

So, the urgency to combat these numbers should not end in October but should live on throughout the year.