Cancer Care for Children in The Philippines

Around 1,200 children are expected to develop cancer on the island of Mindanao each year. Travel is extremely time consuming and too expensive for most families – it can involve travelling for days by foot, land and sea, which poses major challenges when a child develops cancer and requires diagnosis and regular treatment.

When we began our programme five years ago there was just one paediatric oncologist on the island who had recently returned to the country from training overseas. Just 180 of children that developed cancer received a diagnosis and begun treatment. Facilities were limited and just 45% of these children survived.

With the support of people like you, we have continued to fund the development of the Mindanao Paediatric Cancer Care Network which includes five shared care centres in existing government hospitals in strategically chosen locations across the island. Each hospital has a paediatrician with an interest in childhood cancer and over time is supported to develop the skills and the level of diagnosis and treatment they can offer; only referring children to SPMC when they need treatment that is not available locally.

This model has already increased the number of children diagnosed to nearly 400 a year and the survival rate for common cancers to over 65%. A significant reason for this increase is because care closer to home means that more children are diagnosed and start treatment, and fewer abandon it. It also means that the treatment has less impact on the family as costs and time away from home are far less. With more common cancers treated locally, the team at SPMC can focus on the more complex cases.

However, there is still so much more that we can do to improve cancer care for children across the island. With your support, we will continue to improve care at existing centres and also expand the network by adding new centres to bring treatment and care closer to home. This will improve the diagnosis, access to treatment and quality of support for children with cancer, and their families in the Philippines. Thank you for helping to give these children the gift of growing up.