LITTLE WARRIORS
Five-year-old Kyle Ianni and eight-year-old Brock Hasson, who are both battling cancer, take a break Wednesday at Windsor Regional Hospital’s Met campus during an event to mark Childhood Cancer Awareness Day.
September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month and the Windsor Regional Hospital Paediatric Oncology Clinic marked it Wednesday with the help of some of its partners. Transition to Betterness, W.E. Care for Kids, In Honour of the Ones We Love and Canadian Blood Services all joined together at the Metropolitan Campus with various activities.
“We look for the day that we are able to conquer this disease altogether and cure every single kid who has cancer, and hopefully with the advances in research and so on we will get to that one day,” said Dr. Mohammad Jarrar, Windsor’s only pediatric oncologist, who oversees the clinic.
Jarrar said the most common childhood cancer is a type of leukemia called ELL acute lymphoblastic leukemia, which accounts for roughly a quarter of the childhood cancer cases.
“Now the cure rate for this is approaching 90 per cent,” said Jarrar.
After that leukemia, the next most common childhood cancer is brain tumours followed by lymphoma cancers.
He said the province’s childcancer-care system is based on five tertiary care centres, of which London is the closest to Windsor, and seven satellite care centres, of which Windsor is one.
“So the way this works when we have a kid diagnosed with cancer, they go to the tertiary care centre for the initial workup, staging, the treatment plan put together. And instead of the kid having to stay in London the whole period of treatment or having to go back and forth because it’s a few times a week, now we have through the satellite clinic that we do some of the treatment down here in Windsor,” Jarrar said.
“It saves the families a lot of time and makes it easier for them to care for their sick child.” Jarrar said there are roughly 15 new childhood cancer cases diagnosed annually in Windsor, while there are generally about 30 at any given time receiving chemotherapy in London.
There can also be as many as 50 or 60 children who have finished treatment and are under observation for recurrence.