Main Street Du Quoin goes pink for breast cancer awareness

Downtown Du Quoin and the entrance to Marshall Browning Hospital have gone pink to bring awareness to the all-out fight against breast cancer.

Street department personnel on Thursday not only changed the lighting, but added pink bows to lamp posts. Downtown will stay pink throughout the month of October.

Marshall Browning Hospital spokeswomans Pam Logan said lighting at the front of the entrance was changed to pink on Thursday, as well. The work will be combined with a rigorous breast cancer campaign as well as a deep discount on mammograms during the month.

October marks the beginning of Breast Cancer Awareness month, an annual campaign that aims to increase knowledge and awareness of the disease.

A closer look at the staggering stats about breast cancer reveal why this is an important cause to so many people.

According to the American Cancer Society, every 2 minutes a woman in the United States is diagnosed with breast cancer -- that's everything from "stage zero" cancer (which some doctors believe shouldn't even be called cancer) to the deadliest form: invasive breast cancer.

The cancer organization also estimates that 231,840 new cases of invasive breast cancer will be diagnosed in women in the United States this year. And an estimated 2,350 new cases will be diagnosed in men.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer estimated that in 2012, around 1.7 million new cases of breast cancer in women occurred worldwide.

These numbers have influenced the need for early detection and screenings. According to the Food and Drug Administration, more than 39 million mammograms are performed each year in the United States.

And those mammograms may have had an impact. The American Cancer Society reports that the breast cancer death rate is down 34% since 1990. As of Jan. 1, 2014, there were more than 3.1 million breast cancer survivors in the U.S.