We are happy to announce that our WCCD celebration was a big success here in Mbingo Baptist Hospital. We celebrated the day together with parents, survivors, and colleagues from other health facilities.
T Shirts were printed for the survivors, and the message on them was ‘cancer is real and cancer can be treated’, and on the back of the T shirt was printed ‘I am a survivor’.
The posters of the WCCD – modified for our local use – were posted all around the hospital premises and at other health facilities.
We started the celebration on the 14th February with a powerpoint presentation. There were 600 in our audience! They heard about the different early signs of childhood cancer, and we taught the audience how to identify the warning signs.
Then on the 15th in each of our hospitals, we started the day in chapel by explaining the aims of this international day about child cancer. We presented our survivors as a testimony to the fact that “cancer is real and can be treated”. One of our long term survivors showed up with her newborn baby! We explained the early warning signs of the most common childhood cancers in Cameroon to colleagues of our hospital, in addition we also gave them the name of the different hospitals where childhood cancer is treated.
Here is a good story! Two months ago, whilst consulting in the hospital, an old man came up to me and said ‘Doctor, I know you from BBH; you treated my grand-daughter’. He said she had cancer in her abdomen in 2003, when she was 6, and that she is well. I invited him and the child – now 16 years old – to come to our WCCD celebration. Her name is Naimatou; I could not recognise her for she is now so tall!
Dr Francine Kouya.
Mbingo Baptist Hospital.
A group of survivors with Dr Francine and Nurse Comfort
Naimatou, a longterm survivor