Parents dealing with childhood cancer faces various challenges throughout the course of their child’s illness and it’s usually from financial worries right down to their own emotional well-being.
Wows Kids Fiji says counseling for these parents can be beneficial as it can help with acceptance, understanding of the child’s cancer and even get them to share their experiences with others.
Founder Sina Kami says they’re now focusing on ensuring that parents whose child is diagnosed with cancer are supported mentally.
”We have opened up our services to have the parents come in and we have little workshops on financial things like how to look after their finance spiritually and mentally support so we have included that in our programme with our parents.”
Kami says she knows the struggles and the pain these parents often go through in order to remain positive for their child.
Health Ministry’s Chief Nurse, Margaret Leong says sometimes chatting with other families of a child with cancer can be helpful and this often happens in the hospital ward.
” We have the counseling support unit and also our doctors support counseling as well as our nurses. Because the children are in hospital for a while, they become like our family so the relationship between the nurses and the patients and doctors become very close because of the contact they have during the period of treatment.”
Meanwhile, fifteen children under the age of twelve lost their battle to cancer last year and according to WOWS Kids – the youngest victim was a three-year-old girl and an 11-year-old boy being the oldest.
