SYRIA – With a sharpened focus on expanding Syria’s cancer control capacities, the Qatar Red Crescent Society (QRCS) is rolling out a new fundraising campaign under the slogan “Hope for Cure”.
QRCS’s fundraising goal is to raise 5,060,000 Qatari Riyals in donations, which would equate to a US$1,389,728.49 donation, towards assisting cancer patients in desperate need of intensive treatment.
The launch of the fundraising campaign is a clear reflection of QRCS’s humanitarian and social efforts to assist and empower vulnerable individuals and communities without partiality or discrimination.
With this campaign, the Qatar Red Crescent Society aims to ensure life-saving medical care for patients with cancer in northwestern Syria.
The fundraising campaign is being implemented in partnership with the Idlib Governorate Hospital’s Oncology Center, which is operated by the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS).
In a press release, Dr. Mohamed Salah Ibrahim, Director of the Relief and International Development Division at QRCS, said: “QRCS joins hands with the benevolent people of Qatar to launch a live-saving project to secure cancer medications for refugees and displaced people in northwestern Syria.”
The live-saving project will focus on communities and remaining groups of internally displaced people (IDPs) and refugees in the northwestern part of Syria.
All the medical services provided under the life-saving project will be free of charge, as poor patients cannot afford the high cost of treatment and other diagnostic services.
According to official health statistics, there are over 3,000 cancer patients in northwestern Syria, and the number is increasingly growing, with an average of 1,100 new cancer cases being discovered annually.
Commenting on the cancer burden in Syria, Dr. Mohamed Salah Ibrahim noted: “Many of these are helpless children, women, and older persons whose sole hope is to get help from Allah and from donors. Let’s pray that they might find physical and spiritual recovery after years of pain and suffering.”
Hence, QRCS has called on the general public to support the newly launched fundraising campaign and help give new hope to children and elderly people with leukemia and brain cancer, as well as women with breast and lung cancer.
Part of this new funding will be used to provide essential chemotherapy and immunotherapy medications for the benefit of 220 Syrian refugees and displaced people with cancer for a whole year.
What’s more, the Qatar Red Crescent Society has pledged to contribute US$1 million as part of the new fundraising campaign under the slogan “Hope for Cure”.
The donation from QRCS will support the equipping of the Idlib Governorate Hospital’s Oncology Center with chemotherapy and immunotherapy drugs.
This funding amount will also be used to procure diagnostic and therapeutic equipment including a positron emission tomography (PET) scanning device, which is used to detect a wide range of diseases, including cancer.
Bearing this in mind, the Idlib Governorate Hospital will provide lists of medicines and equipment needed for treatment and diagnosis, as well as a list of beneficiaries and their medical reports.
Moreover, the Idlib Directorate of Health will work closely with local and international organizations in conducting studies and surveys on the current situation of the health sector in northern Syria.
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