Alejandra Mendez, Vice President of Childhood Cancer International, shared on LinkedIn:
“I truly love this programme!
‘Zero Abandonment from Start to Finish‘, a CANCaRe Africa initiative, directly supports families of children with cancer who face extreme financial and logistical barriers during treatment in sub-Saharan Africa. Through cash transfers, it helps cover out-of-pocket medical costs, transportation, food, accommodation, and other essential daily expenses that can determine whether a child is able to continue treatment.
What I value most is that this programme restores dignity through trust.
Having personally experienced the fear, uncertainty, anguish, and overwhelming stress of having a child with cancer, I can understand, from lived experience, what these families may be going through.
When a child is seriously ill, parents should not also have to face the impossible choice between continuing treatment and meeting their family’s most basic needs.
There is something profoundly respectful in trusting mothers and caregivers to know what their families need most. They do not need others to decide every expense for them. They need support, flexibility, and confidence in their commitment to their children’s wellbeing.
This programme demonstrates not only scientific excellence, but also a deep respect for families and their experiences. Importantly, the initiative is supported by rigorous research.
A recent special report describes how the evaluation of the Zero Abandonment cash-transfer intervention evolved from initial estimates based on simple assumptions into a more robust, data-driven analysis.
This work aims to determine whether the programme represents good value for money-an essential step in advocating for sustainable, evidence-based policies to reduce treatment abandonment in childhood cancer.
I also deeply appreciate the inclusion of people with lived experience in this research. PWLE perspectives make research more complete, more human, and ultimately more relevant to the policy changes we all hope to achieve.
This is what family-centred care looks like in practice: listening, trusting, supporting, and building evidence so that no child’s treatment is interrupted because their family cannot afford to continue.
Congratulations to everyone involved in this inspiring initiative. I am truly honoured to support it.”