Thousands of fundraisers turned the streets of Hamilton pink last night as they walked in support of the Bermuda Cancer and Health Centre.

Dressed in pink T-shirts, about 2,500 registered participants turned out for the event, which this year aims to raise funds for a new mammogram machine to replace the charity’s existing one.

This year’s message is “Early Detection is Lemon Protection”, a reference to the Know Your Lemons campaign.

The message is that checking breasts regularly, and having screenings and mammograms, can catch cancer early when it is most treatable.

The BCHC provides Know Your Lemons presentations on the signs and symptoms.

The 28th annual BF&M Breast Cancer Awareness Walk, billed as an evening of celebration, education and fundraising, began at 6pm at Barr’s Bay Park.

The event included music, a Zumba warm-up and a health fair with vendors from the Bermuda Diabetes Association and the Bermuda Health Foundation.

Aziza Lovell, who was walking with Team AIG, said: “My mother had breast cancer and is suffering the after-effects, so this cause is close to my heart. I aim to do this walk every year. As long as I am on the island, I do this walk.

“She had it in 2014, she has had a mastectomy, plastic surgery and the medication you take after. She is the main reason I do, but I had a friend’s mum as well so I can empathise. We also have a co-worker who has survived it twice. For females, it’s an important cause.”

There were 124 students from Whitney Institute on the route. Edmeiko Butterfield, the school’s deputy principal, said: “We love to participate in this annually to show our support. Everybody knows someone fighting the good fight against cancer, so we love to show our support.”

Racquel Ingemann, who was walking with a friend, said: “People have had cancer in my family and I think it is an important cause. To come out and support this is always a good thing to do. It is my first walk with this event but I have done some of the other ones.

“It is important to raise awareness that people can go and be checked, have prevention and even catch things early. It’s important for people to recognise that and for us to get our yearly checks.”

Deborah Titterton-Narraway, chief marketing and fundraising officer for the Bermuda Cancer and Health Centre, said: “Our goal was to have 2,000 participants, but we have 2,553 officially registered and we are still collecting money.

“The turnout was amazing. We had a great warm-up with Zumba. We had great turnout from some of the schools; there were more students participating from the schools.

“A big gift to us this year was the Government. They called up and wanted to make a donation, and they far exceeded what they thought their gift to us would be.

“BF&M, our main sponsor for this, organised the event here. That was a tremendous help.

“The last couple of years we raised money for our Equal Access Fund for anyone whose insurance isn’t 100 per cent.

“This year, our goal is $400,000 between the walk and all the other breast cancer events to buy a new mammogram machine. I think that has brought some extra people out.

“We hope to have that by mid next year.”