As part of its work to improve early detection and outcomes for ovarian cancer, the DISARM project is proud to support global awareness efforts around World Ovarian Cancer Day.
In this guest blog, our partners at the World Ovarian Cancer Coalition highlight the importance of visibility, storytelling, and collective action through the #ReachForTheScars initiative for World Ovarian Cancer Day 2026.
For too long, ovarian cancer has been a disease that hides in plain sight. Its symptoms are vague, its diagnosis often delayed, and its stories — especially of those who live with it — too rarely reach the world. This silence fuels isolation, delays diagnosis, and keeps ovarian cancer at the margins of public attention and health system planning. Too often, it costs lives.
Every year, hundreds of thousands around the world hear words that change everything: a diagnosis, a genetic result, or a decision to act before cancer can. Their journeys through diagnosis, treatment, preventative surgery, recovery, and life beyond are marked by resilience, courage, and extraordinary strength. Yet many of these stories remain unseen.
This World Ovarian Cancer Day, May 8th, 2026, we choose a different path — one of visibility and collective strength. We raise our voices, share our stories, and shine a light on what must change to build a better future for everyone impacted.
Why This Moment Matters
Evidence from the World Ovarian Cancer Coalition’s Every Woman Study™, including its landmark low‑ and middle‑income edition published in The Lancet, shows that those living with ovarian cancer face significant delays in diagnosis and barriers to care — not because of who they are, but because of systems that have not yet caught up with what they need.
Change is underway. Awareness is growing. And every voice that joins this conversation moves us closer to a world where visibility drives action and no one faces this disease alone, or too late.
About the Campaign
#ReachForTheScars is a global call to action from the World Ovarian Cancer Coalition — created to honour those who bear the scars of this disease:
- the scars from surgery
- the emotional marks that linger
- the invisible wounds of late diagnosis, recurrence, or loss
These scars are not just reminders of what ovarian cancer has taken. They are proof of what those with ovarian cancer have endured, survived, and continue to fight for — better awareness, better care, and a better future. Every story deserves to be heard.
Women around the world are invited to share their scars — visible or invisible — and what they represent.
But this campaign is not only for survivors. It is also for previvors, families, caregivers, clinicians, advocates, researchers, industry partners, and those who have lost someone to the disease — for everyone who believes women with ovarian cancer deserve more.
How to Stand With Us
You don’t need a scar to take part.
Join us — reshare these stories, add your voice of support, and help build a wave of visibility that reaches far beyond our community. Because when we make ovarian cancer visible, we make change possible. We spark conversations that lead to earlier diagnosis, challenge stigma, and push health systems and policymakers to act with urgency.
Honouring Every WomAN
This World Ovarian Cancer Day, we honour every woman who has faced this disease — those still fighting, those living with the long‑term effects of treatment, and those we have lost far too soon.
Their scars are our collective call to action.
Join us on 8 May. Share your story, stand with a survivor or previvor, and help make ovarian cancer impossible to ignore.
Together, we can ensure there is #NoWomanLeftBehind.