Crowd-funding to beat disease’s ticking timebomb

● Desperate to receive radiation after breast cancer surgery, a Johannesburg woman resorted to crowd-funding to pay for the treatment at a private hospital after endless delays at a government facility.

CJ Carrington, who works for a start-up NGO involved in rhino conservation, said she had timeous surgery and received wonderful help from oncologist Dr Carol Benn, who she described “as fighting the entire [state] system”.

After Carrington’s mastectomy in February last year at Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Hospital “I was told I needed radiation within 21 days because the cancer had spread to my lymph nodes”.

But “appointment after appointment, you go there and the machine is not ready or they send you back home”. Not even a meeting with the head of department resulted in the radiation therapy beginning.

Carrington resorted to crowd-funding to pay for private treatment, and received her radiation in July after raising more than R50 000.