Oncothon: Pediatric Cancer Care Funding with Zainab Shinkafi Bagudu, Ester Demirtshyan

Oncothon is a telethon spanning 24 hours, dedicated to gathering donations for childhood cancer research. Dr. Zainab Shinkafi Bagudu who is the chair of the First Ladies Against Cancer Initiative and well known global cancer advocate.Second speaker is Ester Demirtshyan who is CEO of “City of Smile” charitable foundation in Armenia. They will introduce pediatric cancer foundation and will share their thoughts and initiatives and about pediatric cancer funding.

Speakers

Her Excellency Dr. Zainab Shinkafi-Bagudu is a Consultant Pediatrician and a prominent advocate for women’s health. Currently,  Dr. Shinkafi-Bagudu also sits on the board of the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) and serves as Chairperson of First Ladies Against Cancer (FLAC).

In 2009, she established Nigeria’s first comprehensive diagnostic medical center, offering previously unavailable services such as CT scans, MRI, digital X-rays, and molecular laboratory services in the private sector.

Expanding her efforts, she founded the Medicaid Cancer Foundation (MCF), dedicated to raising cancer awareness and improving access to cancer diagnosis and treatment.

In her capacity as the First Lady of Kebbi State, Nigeria, Dr. Bagudu collaborates with state ministries of health, education, and women’s affairs to implement initiatives aimed at enhancing menstrual hygiene, promoting girl-child education, empowering women economically, and combatting gender-based violence.

Ester Demirtshyan is the Executive Director of City of Smile Foundation. She joined the organization at the end of 2018. Since then, a huge transformation in the area of pediatric cancer support was achieved. Multiple types of raising awareness as well as fundraising events have been organized. During this short period of time the brand of the foundation has become well known and respected throughout the country, which in turn led to greater attention towards kids with cancer. During this period the foundation signed several MOUs with best known cliniques and foundations for partnership and support.

Before joining City of Smile Foundation, for about 10 years Ester worked for IFC (International Finance Corporation) as finance officer. After that she joined the management team of one of the largest construction companies in Armenia and worked there for another almost 10 years.

Ester holds Masters of Liberal Arts in Finance from Harvard Extension School, is an active member of Harvard club of Armenia. Proud mom of 3 boys and 1 girl.

Moderator

Gevorg Tamamyan is the Editor-in-chief of OncoDaily, Head of the Pediatric Cancer and Blood Disorders Center of Armenia, Chairman and Professor of the Department of Hematology and Pediatric Oncology at Yerevan State Medical University and also President-Elect of the Pediatric Oncology East and Mediterranean (POEM) Group.

Dr. Tamamyan is the CEO of the Immune Oncology Research Institute and lately he has been elected as the President of SIOP Asia 2024.

0:15 Introduction

3:36 Zainab Shinkafi Bagudu

9:15 Ester Demirtshyan

13:41 Final message

The Transcript of Oncothon: Pediatric Cancer Care Funding with Gevorg Tamamyan, Zainab Shinkafi Bagudu and Ester Demirtshyan

Gevorg Tamamyan: Hi again and we are at the Global Oncothon. We are continuing, already ten hours we are live and today is the International Childhood Cancer Day. And from the early morning, we are raising awareness about the importance of pediatric cancer.

Pediatric cancer drug development, about the importance of, bringing more clinical trials in the pediatric oncology field. We are trying to raise awareness about the challenges different countries are facing, all over the world in the field of pediatric oncology. And from early morning we have distinguished guests from various countries with their own problems. And right now, we are coming to our next session.

And, by the way, of course, the Oncothon, from the name also, it’s understandable that we’re raising funds for pediatric cancer research. So please donate. and, you can go on through the QR code or through the OncoDaily website. You can find the donation button and donate for this course. Even your small donation would make a big difference so coming to our next, wonderful speakers, it’s a great honor for me to introduce, Her Excellency, Doctor Zainab Shinkafi Bagudu, who is the chair of the First Ladies Against Cancer Initiative.

And she’s a global, very well known global cancer advocate, a pediatrician, UICC board member, founder of the Medicaid Cancer Foundation. And she is in Nigeria doing amazing things, raising awareness about cancer and doing a lot of charities. And, she’s also on the editorial board of OncoDaily, and we are honored to have her today with us. Your Excellency, you are online. We can hear you and we can see you.”

Zainab Shinkafi Bagudu: Good afternoon from Abuja. It’s a pleasure to be here. I think my screen is high.

Gevorg Tamamyan: Thank you very much for joining us.

Zainab Shinkafi Bagudu: Well done. You’ve had a very busy day. Well done. And we’ve been following on and off and lots of learning.

Gevorg Tamamyan: Thank you very much, Your Excellency. Let me introduce also our next guest, and then I’m going to give you the first floor.

Okay and, our next guest is Miss Esther Demirdjian, who is the CEO of City of Smile Charitable Foundation, which is the largest cancer charity in Armenia. And under Miss Demirdjian’s leadership, the charity became the largest in Armenia. And it’s covering the diagnosis and treatment and the whole continuum of care of all kids and young adults up to the age of 25 years in Armenia.

Welcome, everyone, and thank you very much for being with us today. Without further ado, I’m going to give the floor to Her Excellency Doctor Zainab And, the floor is yours. Please can you share, about your initiatives, the incredible work you are doing not only in Nigeria, but globally in the cancer field and what you would like to share with us today on International Childhood Cancer Day.

Zainab Shinkafi Bagudu: Thank you OncoDaily, for this, organizing this very first Oncothon, the intention to focus on childhood cancer and to support, as you’ve heard, my introduction, I’m a pediatrician by training and founder of the Medicaid Cancer Foundation, which is based in Nigeria for, the pillars awareness treatment supports patient navigation, palliative care, capacity building and training, and especially advocating for policies around cancer control.

So this makes us focus nationally on issues that have to do with cancer, but particularly in the low middle income countries. Priorities. When you talk about childhood cancer, for us in Africa, all of the disparities that we can share, I think, followed by or after cancer. The reason for this is that we still have such poor outcomes despite chemotherapy for a lot of childhood cancers.

And the only 25%, have, survival rates in South Africa and other low income countries, in some areas, it’s even less that we try to focus on working with the government to try to include drugs in access programs. There are national and access programs, through which patients are able to get this information. but initially the childhood cancers were not involved.

But we’re working with different partners with incoming from development, like hospitals. We had a workshop for The Saint Jude’s Nigeria with their programs. We had a workshop just couple of weeks ago that was to try to find the context of childhood cancer and to prioritize the solutions that will be the lot going on a lot more than we used to have.

Of course, the capacity of health care professionals, whether we’re talking about the doctors, the nurses, the X-rays, is not at the way it should be. And this is what leads our diagnosis. The clinical, the degree of stigmatizing infectious diseases is much, much higher for us. So we have been working with a lot of medical doctors, nurses and so on to try to increase, step up the trainings, dialogues, first of all, civil society organizations and training institutions that are doing the same thing.

So it’s helping us a little bit and little steps alongside as we try to increase and make sure that the medications are provided on the access program. And then of the doctors as well, snd all the health professional as they were able to, outcomes is definitely not where it should be. We have a lot of add on that some political instability and all the big elephant financial, for most families out of pocket spending is really high. There’s no insurance cost how much more childhood cancer?

So in a nutshell, some in Nigeria are trying to advocate and advocate for child’s, we work with to try. I think my connection has been lost. Can you hear me?

Gevorg Tamamyan: Yes, yes, Your Excellency, we can hear you. Sometimes connectivity was going and coming, but. So, yeah, we receive your message.

Zainab Shinkafi Bagudu: So a little bit.

Gevorg Tamamyan: That’s okay. You know, different parts of the world. The connectivity is, I mean, lagging behind sometimes. We also have this problem. I don’t know, usually the internet here is very good. But today we had some crazy internet. But that’s okay. Thank you very much for your wonderful message.  We certainly heard your message and thank you very much for that.

And I’m going to give the floor to Miss Esther Demirdjian to share her perspective about what we are doing and her message on International Childhood Cancer Day and, about the global Oncothon.”

Esther Demirdjian: Good afternoon. It is definitely a great honor for me to be part of this really esteemed group. I want to thank you because three of you are doctors, and I want to thank you three of you, and, of course, all the other doctors for the amazing work you guys do.

And, of course, professor, I want to compliment you on this amazing initiative where you have united so many passionate advocates and people who are really caring and people who are really doing their best to help survivorship increase, to help children who are fighting cancer all over the world.

Because, I think experience and our knowledge sharing and everything that we do definitely proves that we share so many common problems and so many common issues that we are fighting no matter which part of the world we live in

And, by uniting our efforts, I truly believe that yes, we can achieve better results. We can make it better. We can really one day hopefully achieve when really no child dies of cancer. At least without being given a chance to be cured.

As Professor Tamamyan has mentioned, I lead the foundation that supports children and young adults in Armenia through the age of 25, and we fully fund their treatment in Armenia. And literally every single child that has cancer in Armenia is our beneficiary, because we are also one of the developing countries. So out of pocket expenses are unbearable for the 95% of our population. So if it wasn’t for the foundation, unfortunately, we would have had a huge abandonment rate. But we’re lucky enough to have a really great community, generous donors who are supportive of the cause and help us, in supporting the kids that need the care and and and treatment.

The foundation has been really instrumental in the way that we really want to develop and see prosper the oncology and hematology in Armenia as one of the disciplines. Right. And that is why we try to support our doctors and medical staff in educational aspects in starting to do new procedures which haven’t been done in Armenia, such as, for example, bone marrow transplantation, which we have started doing recently.

And it is a huge achievement for a country like ours, because previously our children had to travel to other countries to get this procedure done. And we all understand that this implies first of all, logistical issues, but then huge financial issues as well, which are not always bearable for the families.

And our foundation has been funding all of the kids. In Armenia, we have about 100 new cases every year. I understand that this number might sound very small for you guys, but for a country like ours, where the total population is nearly around 3,000,000, 100 kids a year is quite a big number. And, hopefully we don’t see an increase in that number, but just see the decrease. However, I do understand that this is my wish, is not really realistic no matter how much we want this.

But at least, what we can do by joining our efforts, by raising our voices all together is definitely to really, the fact that we can ensure we can do our best to make sure that every single child does get the best available care at the moment in the given country And hopefully this best available care will be equal around the developed countries and underdeveloped countries because, I believe children have the right to the best medicine and treatment.

Gevorg Tamamyan: Thank you very much, Miss Demirdjian. Thank you very much for the incredible work you are doing and for all your support. Your Excellency, to conclude the session, I would like you to give a final message for this specific session, for this global Oncothon, and for the International Childhood Cancer Day.

Zainab Shinkafi Bagudu: So I’ll be quick, I think just end by saying childhood cancer is preventable with certain steps. It will, if we detect it early and treat it promptly. Cancer can be treated. And once we know the risk, the children are the future and we must continue to invest in their health, no child should be allowed to…

Gevorg Tamamyan: I think Doctor Zainab wanted to say that no child should be without treatment.

Thank you very much, everyone. Thank you very much for joining and being with us today. 

Esther Demirdjian: Thank you.

Gevorg Tamamyan: Thanks a lot. And to the public again, we are pleased you see the at the bottom line the donatio,. and let’s just spread the news about it and let’s help to support this very noble mission of Oncoheroes biosciences. Thank you very much.

Esther Demirdjian: Thank you, and great initiative.

Zainab Shinkafi Bagudu: Thank you.

Gevorg Tamamyan: Thanks.