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 us a prescription for drugs which would have cost about £400 His 12-year old daughter had an aggressive muscle cancer (rhabdomyosarcoma) treated in the capital Yaounde. He said “I have nothing left doctor”. He had used all his money (and that sent by a sister in the UK) to pay for treatment. Prof looked at the list of drugs and reduced it to the bare essential ones. He then asked if I was willing to supply these (free of charge) from our Burkitt lymphoma stocks. Of course I was. Sadly this girl later died, but her grateful pa had travelled all the way north to thank us; all day in public bus. I still cannot get used to a system in which if you have no money you do not receive medical care. Isn’t our NHS wonderful; for all its problems?
Paul