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Joger Dong, a five-year
old boy from Kapit is missing out
on all the simple joys of childhood as he is suffering from leukemia
which
requires chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant.
He had undergone the full
course of chemotherapy at the
Sarawak General Hospital (SGH) here but since a transplant cannot be
carried
out locally, he has to be sent to Universiti Malaya Medical Centre
(UMMC) in Kuala Lumpur.
Representatives of
Sarawak Children Cancer Society (SCCS)
led by its president Raymond Thong were at the Kuching International
Airport
recently to send
Joger and his family off.
In many ways, the boy is
a very lucky. Finding a matching
cord blood for transplant is no easy task, SCCS said through a press
release
yesterday.
“A search was done in a
few registries before a match was
found but it comes with a staggering cost. The cord blood costs more
than
RM70,000. The transplant at UMMC is estimated at RM60,000 while the
required
total body radiation at Subang Jaya Medical Centre cost RM22,000,” SCCS
said.
The centre added the
preliminary and post treatment cost
that Joger’s family had to come out with is almost RM180,000. Joger’s
family
managed to pay up the initial deposit of RM20,000 but was unable to
come up
with the rest of the fund. They then approached SCCS for assistance and
its
financial aid committee responded very quickly.
With the help of a social
worker, a financial assessment
result confirmed that Joger’s family was unable to meet the financial
requirement.
SCCS immediately pledged
RM160,000 to cover the balance
of the transplant cost and issued a letter of undertakings to the
medical
centres.
Meanwhile Joger’s father,
Dong King Hui, thanked SCCS for
their swift response in making the fund available for the transplant.
Dong
pledged that he would do his best to raise fund for SCCS so that other
children
suffering from cancer could also benefit from SCCS financial assistance.
Dong and Thong called
upon the public to donate
generously to SCCS so that society would be able to provide financial
assistance, among other things, to children with cancer throughout Sarawak.
SCCS is a non-profit
voluntary organization
formed by a group of parents of children with cancer.
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