Wish Nepal Foundation

Programs

Funding Treatments:

The foundation will take children under its wings each year and will focus exclusively on funding their medical expenses. The aim is to see these children survive and carry on with their lives, including attending school. The children will be chosen from amongst those undergoing treatment at, Kanti Children's Hospital in consultation with oncologists and doctors. The financial needs of the families will also be evaluated.

Awareness Programs:

The foundation will conduct awareness programs as part of its core activities. Worldwide date shows that 80% of childhood cancer is curable and that children diagnosed early have a 93% chance of survival. After acquiring treatment at Kanti Children's Hospital, assuming all is well with their health, parents and guardians adopt a lax attitude and fail to follow guidelines given by doctors, eventually harming their child’s health. Diet and nutrition go hand in hand and it is vital to eat a healthy diet full of nutrients during and after chemotherapy. Personal hygiene also has to be maintained at all times, to stay fit and healthy. However, due to lack of basic knowledge, newly recovered child patients and their parents fail to follow through and very often cancer relapses. The foundation will conduct awareness programs once a month to make parents and children aware of cancer and other aspects related to the disease. Awareness programs will be initiated through the media such as television, print media, talk shows etc to bring awareness. Programs will also be initiated at the accommodation facility to instill a sense of responsibility amongst parents and guardians.

Counseling:

Counseling helps people manage and respond to their mixed emotions about life's challenges. Counselors cannot always solve problems, but can provide a safe place for people with cancer to talk about their concerns. Because counselors are separate from a person's life, they provide a helpful, outside viewpoint. Like adults, children with cancer face psychological and mental trauma. They will have to cope with cancer diagnosis, may become depressed or anxious and face sleep disorders or other problems. They may fail to understand why they are being treated or feel like they are being deprived of activities linked to normal childhood, such as going to school and playing outdoors. To ensure their mental wellbeing, it is pivotal to counsel cancer stricken children and let them know that they will be able to lead a normal life once free of cancer and that strong willpower is required. Counselling will not cure cancer but will help a child fighting cancer to cope better with the situation.

Accommodation programs:

In consultations with doctors, it was deemed necessary that an accommodation facility should be provided to children and their families, during the course of treatment, while in Kathmandu. Kanti hospital treats children from various rural parts of Nepal. Parents and guardians along with their child, travel for days before coming to Kathmandu from their villages. Depending on the type of cancer, and the course of treatment required, financial burden is enormous on families who haveborrowed money from money lenders or have sold a piece of land for their child’s treatment. However, once in Kathmandu, depending on the course of treatment, it can go to any length of time. Parents need to be with their child during its entirety. Lack of knowledge about cancer and difficulty in communicating with doctors often results in them feeling depressed and frustrated. They do not understand what the doctor is trying to tell them and fail to follow through on needed actions. During the course of treatment, some children lose the battle to cancer while otherfamilies, due to lack of Rs. 25,000 (200 dollars) opt to take the child back to their villagesand not get further treatment. The financial strain takes a toll on families. This is where the foundation steps in by providing the funds a family needs for their child's treatment. This phase is burdensome, since families need to rent rooms and secure meals, in addition to medical expenses. Hence providing accommodation facility was deemed the need of the hour to ease the burden on families. Our experience has shown that often unable to bear the financial burden, parents take children to their villages and fail to come back for recurring treatments. This hampers the recovery phaseand for many children who become cancer free, the cancer relapses after few months. This is indeed an alarming situation where children, once recovering well have died or cancer has relapsed. To prevent this situation and save lives, accommodation for children with cancer has been deemed a priority to save lives.