Improve Cancer Care for 270 Children in Myanmar

Thanks to your wonderful donations, we have now reached the GlobalGiving target for our project to help 270 children with cancer in Myanmar. Over the past two years, we have increased the number of children with cancer gaining access to the treatment and care that they desperately need and established a counselling service for these children and their families. All of this has been made possible by your generous support.

We have now begun working with Mandalay Children’s Hospital (MCH) in addition to Yangon’s Children’s Hospital (YCH), so we can reach even more children with cancer across Myanmar. In 2018, the number of children diagnosed with cancer at YCH and MCH increased to 581 – far exceeding the 270 that we were reaching in 2017. Altogether, 1,439 children accessed the paediatric oncology services at both hospitals, which includes children being diagnosed, receiving treatment and/or returning for follow up appointments.

Whilst we were delighted with the increasing number of children accessing treatment in Myanmar, following a three month visit by our Psychosocial Support Advisor, Megan Cruise, we recognised a need for more emotional support in the hospitals. Childhood cancer can have enormous impacts on the mental health of children and their families, as well as the healthcare professionals involved in caring for them. This can lead to long-lasting emotional difficulties and, in some cases, can cause families to abandon treatment due to overwhelming psychological strain.

We have now partnered with the Myanmar Clinical Psychology Consortium (MCPC) – the first clinical psychology education centre in Myanmar – to establish a counselling service for children with cancer; their families and the YCH paediatric oncology staff. Postgraduates and students from MCPC work on a voluntary basis to provide a combination of private, one-to-one counselling and bedside counselling for those who are too sick to leave their beds.

The service, which is the first of its kind at YCH, saw 49 children, family members and staff for a total of 65 sessions in the first three months (January 2019 – March 2019). The volunteers also conducted workshops for 24 parents to encourage them to use the newly available support and to provide them with advice on managing emotional stress.

It is only with your support that we have been able to establish such a valuable programme to ensure even more children and families receive the psychological support they need to cope with the emotional stress of childhood cancer. The service has now been up and running for six months and continues to grow – with the initial four MCPC volunteers now becoming six. We plan to continue expanding the current service further and eventually hope to extend a similar service to MCH.

Thank you once again for supporting children with cancer in Myanmar by donating to our GlobalGiving project. We have recently launched a new project on GlobalGiving for our programme on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines, where as few as 30% of children with cancer will receive a diagnosis this year. To find out more, please visit the project page.

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