Treatment for children with cancer in Belarus is generally very good. After the accident doctors received a great deal of support from abroad, particularly from Germany and Japan, and the protocols adopted to treat children are now the same as in most European countries.
But sometime a medicine is urgently needed and is simply not available in
Belarus.
When this happens, we often get an SOS call either directly from the hospital or from Children in Trouble, asking if we can purchase some medicine for a particular child. Sometimes the child has a fungal infection which cannot be treated, sometimes they need a vital medicine either before or after a bone marrow transplant.
Whenever we can, when funds allow, we try to help and purchase these medicines. We realise that in some cases it can be a matter life and death. During the last few years we have often purchased medicines jointly with Chernobyl Children’s Lifeline and we hope to continue co-operating in this way.
We are sometimes also able to support the hospital with purchases of equipment which help the parents who stay there
with their children – a televisions or microwave or these tables where the children do arts and crafts