Quality care for childhood cancer a right, not a favour
A patient undergoes cancer screening at the Integrated Molecular Imaging Center (IMIC) located at the Kenyatta University Teaching Referral and Research Hospital.
Photo credit: File | Lucy Wanjiru | Nation Media Group
A mother called me a few years ago, asking me to get a job for her son. This would have been a typical Kenyan-style request. What is different is that the young man had been treated for childhood cancer a decade and a half earlier.
He had completed treatment, gone through school and college, and was looking forward to joining the job market. Another parent could not hide her tears of joy as she narrated how her son, who was treated for cancer aged two, is now coping well in preschool.
Sadly, such success stories of children treated and going on to start school or complete college are rather few. Yet this should be the norm not the exception, as shown by survival rates of up to 80 percent in the global North.
Cancer in childhood has the potential to negatively impact education, future development and life opportunities. For instance, a history of childhood cancer can be the basis of lifelong social stigma and subtle discrimination in employment and health insurance.
A good example is children on treatment for blood cancers who may end up spending up to six months in hospital and many more months of treatment as outpatients, which causes them to lose school time and childhood memories.
There is an urgent imperative to strengthen and institutionalise programmes that seek to create better memories for children hospitalised with cancer by engaging them in therapeutic art, music, and crafts. Clinicians must also be intentional in accommodating and strengthening the age-appropriate participation of children in decision-making that relates to their own treatment.
Everything possible should be done holistically to ensure children are cured of cancer and allowed to grow up and contribute to the social and economic development of our country. Having nearly 75 percent of children diagnosed with cancer succumb reflects a fundamental failure and to some extent, a contravention of international conventions on the rights of children to which Kenya is a signatory.
For instance, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child states clearly that every child has the right to access healthcare, including curative and rehabilitative services regardless of where they live or insurance status.
Quality healthcare is, therefore, a right and not a commodity to be transacted by businesses nor a charitable package to be dished out by politicians.
Every member of our society from professionals, political, religious and business leaders to ordinary Kenyans has a moral responsibility to act with a sense of urgency to improve outcomes in childhood cancers.
Ultimately, our values and humanity as Kenyans can only be measured by how well we treat the most vulnerable, especially children.
Perhaps a good starting point to redeem ourselves is to enact laws that would allocate 50 percent of assets recovered from corruption to national childhood cancer programmes.
September is the global childhood cancer awareness month. This is meant to allow us to reaffirm our commitment as a country to ensure that no child suffering from cancer is deprived of his or her right of access to the highest attainable standard of healthcare.
