‘Love Your Melon’ (LYM), a charitable organization with a mission to improve the lives of children with cancer, has in the last nine months supported healthcare institutions across the country.

The move is geared towards enabling more early childhood cancer patients to have limitless access to effective health care and to ease the burden on the parents of such children.

Over 32 patients nationwide have benefited from LYM's $30,000 health care support.

Research has shown that children in Lower and Middle Income economies are 4 times more likely to die from childhood cancers as compared to developed economies.

This can be attributed to misdiagnosed illnesses or abandoned treatment due to its high cost. Also, many health professionals entrusted to care for these children often lack specialized training.

The Sub-Saharan Africa Regional Coordinator for World Child Cancer (WCC), Mr Emmanuel Ayire Adongo made this known when he visited some of the cancer patients on treatment at the Cape Coast Teaching Hospital (CCTH).

The WCC is a UK-based NGO, with a subsidiary in Ghana, working with partners including LYM, UBS Optimus Foundation, DFID, British Foreign School Society (BFSS) in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and its allied agencies.  

Mr Adongo said the charitable organization in collaboration with CCTH have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with 3 other health facilities for the expansion of childhood cancer services.

They were the Agogo Presbyterian, Korle Bu Teaching and Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospitals.

Globally, about 70 per cent of cancer-related deaths occur in Lower and Middle Income Countries (LMICs) with 24.1 million new cases estimated to occur by 2030.

Mr Adongo indicated that childhood cancers have been identified as the leading cause of death in children less than 18 years with 300,000 new cases expected to be diagnosed each year globally.

To address these concerns, WHO had announced a new Global Initiative for Childhood Cancers (GICC), to achieve at least 60 per cent survival rate for children with cancer, thereby, saving an additional 1 million lives.

To ease the pace of achieving the global mission set out by WHO, Mr Adongo said the support for early childhood cancers was key to easing the enormous phenomenon of the financial burden of diagnosis, treatment, care and transportation for patients and families, hence, the support.

Particularly, he announced that the WCC and its partners had supported the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, Oncology Unit of the Child Health Department to develop the first Centre of Excellence for paediatric oncology in West Africa.

The centre is currently strategically positioned to provide critical skills and improve the quality of paediatric cancer care in the sub-region while providing universally accessible and locally-owned cancer services, rather than the ad-hoc projects currently in place.

It will train paediatric oncologists across Sub-Saharan Africa, as well as nurses, pharmacists, surgeons, radiologists, pathologists and haematologists and act as a model to demonstrate how childhood cancer can be treated successfully and cost-effectively in other comparable settings.

A paediatrician with the CCTH Dr Emmanuela Amoako and a scholarship beneficiary said the gesture by the WCC, LYM and partners to train medical doctors was immeasurable and called for increased assistance to reach out to more patients.