Sharjah: Shaikha Jawaher Bint Mohammad Al Qasimi, wife of the Ruler of Sharjah, has said that national strategies to fight childhood cancer must be an integral part of all programmes that work to control the disease and other non-communicable diseases worldwide.
Shaikha Jawaher is also the founder and royal patron of the Friends of Cancer Patients Society (FoCP), international ambassador of the World Cancer Declaration for the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) and international ambassador for childhood cancer for UICC.
The statement was made during Shaikha Jawaher’s official visit to Tanzania to participate in the 11th African Conference of International Society of Pediatric Oncology. The event is being held in Dar es Salaam in collaboration with UICC and the International Society for Paediatric Oncology (SIOP).
Shaikha Jawaher called for developing international strategies to save the lives of the thousands of children suffering from paediatric cancer around the world, especially in low- and middle-income countries. She also highlighted the need to reduce the disease’s negative impacts on children, their parents, and the entire community. “Cancer is one of the leading causes of death among children in developing countries, which affects over 250,000 children every year. Around 90,000 children die from cancer each year and 80 per cent of them are from low- and middle-income countries”.
Shaikha Jawaher suggested that initiatives such as vaccination for children at an early age to prevent certain cancers could serve as a means of increasing cooperation at the international level. Services like providing early detection and care centres for cancer patients in rural areas would also facilitate treatment and make services more accessible in low-income communities, she added.
Shaikha Jawaher’s visit to Tanzania marks her first international participation within the framework of a partnership agreement signed with the UICC in February, under the terms of which she took the role of a primary active and influential partner of the UICC in its upcoming projects.
