THE POSITIVE PROFESSOR

SOCIAL media’s voice of calm Karol Sikora has been signed up by the Daily Express. Readers can now enjoy his soothing advice in these troubled times which has won him hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter. If you need reassuring everything’s going to be all right read Professor Positivity.

IT WAS all the way back in early March and I was having lunch with an oncologist friend, talking about our fears that cancer patients would be forgotten in all of this.

I was determined to do something but I had no idea what. Lobbying politicians and writing the odd article here and there just wasn’t going to be enough.

My friend, an avid Twitter user, suggested I sign up and try to get the message out there. He told me I’d struggle to get more than 100 followers but it could make a difference. So I went back to the office and made an account.

Sadly my mission to get cancer services moving has not been as successful as it needs to be, but on the whole I think social media has been a force for good in this pandemic.

Virtually every day I will put out a tweet pleading with people to get any symptoms of cancer checked out, and to my amazement lots of people have listened and got checked.

Recently we managed to get a petition asking for more research into childhood cancer over the 100,000 names we needed for a debate in Parliament.

The response was just fantastic and it could make a genuine difference.

How else could you mobilise so many people so quickly?

I intend to use the platform to continue to campaign for cancer patients and awareness. The power of social media, especially Twitter, is something many people underestimate.

People seem to enjoy sharing a personal story or two and, of course, my dog Chico is more popular than me.

Reconnecting with old friends has been brilliant, too.

Too often it is used to throw mud around. I have tried to stay above that but not always successfully.

I’m determined to keep making the case for cancer services to resume as quickly and as safely as possible.

● Follow me on Twitter @ProfKarolSikora