Frontline medical staff share images at work to encourage action over cancer

FRONTLINE MEDICAL staff are sharing images of themselves in operating theatres as part of a new campaign that aims to encourage people to take action on signs of cancer.

Don’t Mask The Light, started by consultant plastic surgeon Theo Nanidis, was set up to show there is a “light at the end of the tunnel” for patients undergoing treatment, and has raised more than £3,000 for Cancer Research UK. The campaign began after a colleague took a striking photograph of Mr Nanidis in the operating theatre just after the first lockdown ended.

Mr Nanidis said: “There was a lot of fear around, particularly during the first lockdown and I wanted to spread a message of positivity. When I saw the photograph, it made me think of how dark times have been in the last year and I was flooded with emotion and feelings of sadness.

“I was exhausted, I’d had pneumonia, so I was tired and feeling low. Services around the world hadn’t been perfect and the pain, emotional turmoil and uncertainty that patients must have gone through rushed to my mind.”

Mr Nanidis’s initial idea was to ask the public to post their own masked selfies sharing their personal stories and, if they were able to do so, donate to the charity. But as the campaign grew, medics began submitting photographs, masked and backlit with theatre lights. Mr Nanidis said he wanted to “remind people that the NHS is still open”. Visit https://dontmaskthelight.blackbaud-sites.com/#gridContent.