Dear CHIFA colleagues,
Today is International Childhood Cancer Day, 'a global collaborative campaign to raise awareness about childhood cancer, and to express support for children and adolescents with cancer, the survivors and their families'.
'Each year, more than 300,000 children ages birth to 19 years are diagnosed with cancer around the world. Approximately 8 in 10 of these children live in low and middle-income countries where their survival rate is often near 20%. The Target Goal of the WHO Global Childhood Cancer Initiative is to eliminate all pain and suffering of children fighting cancer and achieve at least 60% survival for all children diagnosed with cancer around the world by 2030. This represents an approximate doubling of the current cure rate and will save an additional one million children’s lives over the next decade.'
https://internationalchildhoodcancerday.org/
The UN Rights of the Child states: Children have the right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health and facilities for the treatment of illness and rehabilitation of health.
As WHO DG Dr Tedros has said: “Too many children have their lives cut short by cancer, and survival rates in poor countries are scandalously lower than those in wealthy countries.”
Every 3 minutes, a child dies of cancer. Many children are in pain and suffering worldwide at this moment, and the vast majority of this would have been avoided by application of basic healthcare information. I believe that we - CHIFA - could be doing more, collectively and individually, to address this issue. Let's build a future where children are no longer dying due to lack of healthcare information - this means ensuring that everyone - the public, health workers, researchers, policymakers - has access to the healthcare information they need to prevent, diagnose, and manage childhood cancer appropriately.
An important first step would be to assess current knowledge, attitudes and practice across different countries. If anyone is willing to look into this topic on our behalf, please contact me (neil@hifa.org).
Best wishes, Neil
Let's build a future where children are no longer dying for lack of healthcare information - Join CHIFA (Child Healthcare Information For All): http://www.hifa.org/forums/chifa-child-health-and-rights
CHIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is the coordinator of the HIFA campaign (Healthcare Information For All) and assistant moderator of the CHIFA forum. Twitter: @hifa_org FB: facebook.com/HIFAdotORG neil@hifa.org
