Every year on 4th February, the world unites to mark World Cancer Day (WCD), a campaign that raises awareness, amplifies voices, and inspires collective action against cancer. Behind the scenes, the World Cancer Day website, built with Drupal, powers millions of people, providing a central platform for global engagement.
Project overview
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Campaign and its impact
The World Cancer Day 2025-2027 campaign embraces the theme “United by Unique”, emphasizing people-centered care. This approach prioritizes the needs, values, and active participation of individuals, families, and communities in cancer care. By putting people at the heart of the conversation, the campaign promotes a shift toward more inclusive, responsive, and compassionate health systems.
The 2025 campaign achieved remarkable global engagement:
- +900 activities in 120 countries
- +600 stories shared in text, video, and art
- +1,000 participants in the Upside Down Challenge
- +30,000 press mentions in 162 countries
- 6 billion digital impressions and 9 million social media engagements
- 530,000 website visitors and +300,000 campaign video views
These numbers highlight both the scale of the campaign and the critical need for a platform that can reliably support millions of users simultaneously.
Explore more about the campaign and join the global action at World Cancer Day.
Supporting global action with Drupal
Supporting a high-profile global campaign requires flexibility, scalability, and robustness, capabilities that are fundamental to Drupal’s architecture.
Key features
- Multilingual CMS: Centralized content management across multiple languages ensures the website can reach a large global audience.
- Scalable hosting: Drupal handles traffic surges exceeding 194 GB per hour, delivering consistent performance during peak activity.
- Complex interactive tools: Custom features such as poster creation, event planning tools, and a global activities map make it easy for users to participate and share initiatives.
- Dynamic content delivery: Scrollytelling, multimedia content, and personal stories from those affected by cancer create an engaging, meaningful experience.
- Accessibility: Drupal’s accessibility capabilities reinforce inclusivity by supporting diverse audiences at scale.
"I've been pleased with my experience with Drupal. While the earlier versions were sometimes technically complex, it always felt like a solid, robust platform to build upon. I have been genuinely pleased that we chose to stick with it over the long term and to witness its evolution into a more mature and flexible platform."
Charles Andrew Revkin Senior Digital Strategy Manager Union for International Cancer Control ( UICC)
Scaling impact with Drupal AI
To manage the vast volume of user-submitted stories while maintaining quality, relevance and inclusivity, WCD integrated Drupal AI. This automation helps with content moderation and reduces manual workload, allowing more people to share their experiences and supporting the campaign’s people-centered mission as it scales.
Why Open Source matters for global health initiatives
For non-profit organizations in the healthcare sector, efficiency, transparency, and long-term sustainability are essential, especially when every investment must directly support the mission. As an open-source platform, Drupal eliminates licensing costs and avoids vendor lock-in, allowing resources to be focused on participation and impact rather than software fees. Supported by a global contributor community, Drupal benefits from continuous improvements in security, accessibility, and performance, making it a trusted foundation for sensitive, high-impact initiatives like World Cancer Day.
Technology that serves people at scale
The global fight against cancer requires collective action, and Drupal plays an important role in enabling that engagement. By managing large-scale data, complex interactive features, and high-traffic performance, the platform ensures that the campaign can reach millions of people, foster participation, and support socially impactful initiatives year after year.