Improve cancer care for 250 children in Malawi

Over the last three months there have been three training visits by healthcare professionals from the UK and Amsterdam.   Dr Simon Bailey and Nurse Hannah Di-Lullo from Newcastle Royal Victoria Infirmary visited in May to provide training courses for doctors and nurses.  Dr Trijn Israels, from Amsterdam, visited in June and provided further training for local staff and mentoring for the project leader.  We are very grateful to Simon, Hannah and Trijn for participating in these visits.

Survival rates for Burkitts lymphoma are now 60% and for Wilm tumor patients they are 48%.  Survival for acute lymphoblastic leukemia patients is 15% from a base of zero less than two years ago. 

The project leader, Professor Liz Molyneux, attended the SIOP Africa conference in Cape Town in March and spoke to delegates about the project.  

We are delighted with how the project is progressing and would like to thank all our Global Giving supporters.  

Thank-you! 

Our project in Malawi is going really well.  Thank you so much to all our Global Giving supporters.  You support has raised almost $4,000 for the project which is enough to buy life-saving chemotherapy drugs for at least 37 children.  

In the last year 255 children have been treated for cancer at the Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital.  This is an increase of 20% on the previous year demonstrating the impact of the poster awareness raising campaign and word of mouth about the curability of cancer amongst parents and primary healthcare workers.

Survival rates for Burkitts lymphoma (accounting for around 40% of all child cancer cases) are now 60%.  Children with Wilms tumour (kidney cancer accounting for about 10-15% of cases) are now being successfully treated and survival rates are around 35%.  

World Child Cancer has twinned the Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital with hospitals in Newcastle in the UK and Amsterdam in the Netherlands.   Both partnerships are very strong.  A doctor and nurse from Newcastle have each spent a week at the QECH training staff and providing mentoring for the project leader.   In addition, a doctor from Amsterdam has visited the project for approximately three weeks to provide further training including the setting up of a new child cancer tumour database and training the new database manager.  The new database is critical to improving survival rates further by providing information about the causes of mortality and allowing doctors to adjust treatment protocols accordingly.  

We are only $241 away from raising $4,000 on the Global Giving site.  Any further support you can give to our project in Malawi would be very much appreciated.   Thank you again for believing in our work.   

Links:

• http://www.worldchildcancer.org