World Child Cancer (UK - Global)
World Child Cancer’s objective is to end preventable deaths and strengthen healthcare systems to secure equitable access to treatment and care for children with cancer in low and middle-income countries. Childhood cancer is highly curable with over 80% survival rates in high-income countries, but in lower-income countries, survival rates drop to as low as 10%.
Established in 2007, World Child Cancer works in 12 countries across Asia and Africa, as well as in Mexico, to improve access to, and the quality of, paediatric oncology services, through facilitating training of medics, equipping wards, providing direct support to families, and raising awareness of early warning signs of childhood cancer.
World Child Cancer is an official partner of the World Health Organisation in implementing their Global Initiative for Childhood Cancer, which aims to double the global survival rate for children with cancer to 60% by 2030. World Child Cancer also collaborates with respective Ministries of Health to deliver interventions that progress the Global Initiative.
In 2023/2024, the Eurofins Foundation is contributing to the work of World Child Cancer on “nutrition provision for children with cancer to improve their treatment and health outcomes.”
In the lower-income countries where the project will take place, healthcare is extremely under-resourced, with childhood cancer survival rates standing at just 10-20%. Amongst other factors, poor nutrition is a contribution to low survival rates.
When children with cancer suffer from chronic malnutrition, they are at significant risk of poor growth and poor response to treatment. As many as half of the children presenting at World Child Cancer’s partner hospitals are malnourished.
The Eurofins Foundation’s grant will help ensure children being treated for cancer in partner hospitals in Myanmar, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Nepal, Bangladesh, Malawi and Cameroon can be nutritionally supported whilst undergoing treatment. By funding nutritional supplements for children, supporting parents’ nutritional workshops and by training healthcare staff on partner paediatric oncology wards on how to effectively assess the nutritional status and provide nutritional intervention, the programme will improve an estimated 2,180 children’s chances of survival and long-term health outcomes.
This project contributes to the following United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals
