Beryl Thyer Memorial Africa Trust (BTMAT)

Many of you will remember the “Beryl Thyer Bulletin”. Peter McCormick’s sons Richard and David – now trustees – have created this website where you can find up to date news of our children’s cancer treatment programmes at the 3 Baptist Hospitals in Cameroon. My recent visit to Cameroon (November 22nd to December 6th) with Prof…

We have treated over 700 children with Burkitt’s lymphoma at the 3 Baptist hospitals of N.W. and S.W. Cameroon. The one year survival of these children is over 60%: relapse rate after one year is less than 5%. These are the best treatment results recorded in resource-poor African hospitals and a great credit to the…

Greetings to all our supporters everywhere! Yesterday evening I was reading a topic in SIOP News Issue no 41, entitled “Paediatric oncology in Developing Countries: How can the SIOP and ASPHO membership collaborate?” Some of the points mentioned included career opportunities, funding, establishing programmes, feasibility of treatment, and demonstrating ‘twinning’ approaches. As I was reading…

Yesterday Prof Hesseling and I attended a meeting of The N.W. Cameroon Parent Organisation (i.e., parents of children with cancer) here at Mbingo – which we helped to establish in May of this year. One pa had travelled all the way from Mutengene in the S.W. I saw this man in May when he showed …

One Today has been an exciting day. Prof Hesseling, nurses Glenn and Vera and I travelled to a small village called Ntada where parents of 3 children treated for Burkitt’s lymphoma awaited us. All 3 children were well. The parents will form the nucleus of a new parent group which will teach villagers to recognise…

St Andrew’s C of E Church, Kettering, is one which was represented at the Synod I spoke at in September (see ‘help from on high’). The clergy and congregation there have responded, and have certainly put heart and soul into helping our Trust. This evening was the first of two days of St Andrew’s Community…

Wheelchairs are always needed in our Cameroonian hospitals. I have observed some pretty ropey ones donated from the North American continent. BTMAT’s own donated wheelchairs have been from NHS Kettering General Hospital Trust’s warehouse, and consisted of items which were time-expired, and could not, by the Hospital’s rules, be loaned out again. Pity that, because…

When I was 14, and wide-eyed at the novelty of puberty, all of 58 years ago, I studied ‘Kipps’, by HG Wells, for O Level English Lit., at Manchester Central Grammar School for Boys, Whitworth Street, Manchester. Decades later Tommy Steele carried the story onward, as a rather good show with the name ’arf a…

Dr Ellionora Orpelli is something else again! Elli was a friend of my wife Jenny; a live wire, a bundle of fun, and a highly respected locum doctor at Jenny’s practice. Elli has always declared an interest in the work of BTMAT, and BTMAT has cherished its link with Elli, in the hope that one…

CCLGPODC sounds like a Welsh village, but in fact is the ‘Children’s Cancer and Leukaemia Group; Paediatric Oncology in Developing Countries’. This is an organisation of doctors working for the NHS in the UK, all of whom are specialists in child cancer, and have a particular interest in child cancer in developing countries. Their aim…