On 11 and 12 February, the Sanofi Espoir Foundation organized in Paris two days for the 10th anniversary of its program aiming reducing children cancer in low and middle income countries, My Child Matters.
This event provided the opportunity to bring together all of the program contributors from around the world: mentors, projects coordinators, Sanofi affiliates, and international health experts. The first day was devoted to discuss the human resources in developing countries, decentralization of care, governments’ commitments, and cancer registries. On the second day, two workshops were organized: the first one about “patient centricity”, and the second one about the leadership of projects managers.
Childhood cancer is one of the main cause of death for the children, every year 175 000 children are confronted with cancer. The five-year survival rate of children with cancer varies from 10 to 80% depending on the lever of resources available in their country. Yet, there are effective therapeutic solutions for the majority of these cancers, if the diagnosis is made early and if the child is correctly taken into care.
In light of this observation, the Sanofi Espoir Foundation initiated in 2006 the program My Child Matters with the support of key partners: St Jude Children’s Research Hospital, International Society of Pediatric Oncology (SIOP), Union for International Cancer Control (UICC), French-African Pediatric Oncology Group (GFAOP), and the parents association Childhood Cancer Internationa (CCI)l.
Its aim is to accompany the various countries so as to adapt itself to the local situation, by acting on: an early diagnosis, a decentralization of healthcare to ensure medical support is accessible and affordable for children, the improvement of the access to healthcare, including the fight against the pain and the palliative care, and the public information campaigns to help with the identification and early detection of disease.
Thus, the program My Child Matters represents one of the most important initiatives implemented to fight against the pediatric cancers in developing countries.