by Daniele Ciofi

I've had a dream of a health cooperation project for years, as opposed to surgery or emergency medicine, paediatric oncology, the field in which I have most of my professional experience, rarely offers the opportunity to fulfil this dream.

This year I've been lucky, Cure2Children (C2C) asked for my help. The Foundation was born in Florence, created by the haemato-oncologist Lawrence Faulkner together with some parents who unfortunately lost their children to the disease. This project is designed to share knowledge about bone marrow transplantation with developing countries that need it, where there is a need for funding and/or professional support. The main project of C2C is currently in Pakistan. 

At first I was reluctant, but then the will to succeed pushed me forward. On the 7th of May 2009, Lawrence Faulkner, Eugenio La Mesa (a fund raising professional) and myself left for Pakistan. We arrived after travelling for 40 hours and I was very happy to see Mr Khalid again, we had treated successfully his thalassemic daughter in Florence. The country has a wide gap between the rich and the poor but seems to be very active and eager to emerge and improve. The Pakistan Institute of Medical Science (PIMS) is a huge complex with a paediatric hospital with 500 beds. Cure2Children has created there in only one month a bone marrow transplantation centre. I met the team of physicians, technicians, nurses and data manager and we discussed central venous catheters (CVC), my Pakistani colleagues were very knowledgeable. My task was also to motivate those people to fight back against the thalassemia in a country where more than 50.000 people have the disease and 7% of the population (150 millions) are healthy carriers of the abnormal gene. The following days were dedicated to meeting with administrators, patients and health professionals. We visited Shifa, a nice private hospital in Islamabad for those who can afford to be treated there. I gave some advice on transplanted child management to my colleagues and they seemed very enthusiastic and interested. The Executive Director of PIMS discussed the possibility of a cooperation project for the training of Pakistani nurses and I felt so proud to represent my country on that occasion.

When I visited the oncology ward I felt dizzy and breathless. No words can explain what I felt like. Six beds, no sink, and six little children with the comfort of the few things that their parents could buy them, since they were spending everything they have to treat them. A couple was looking at an x-ray of their child, that had no hope to survive. A child with retinoblastoma was crying in pain, but morphine vials were too expensive and not available. Dr. Naila, the paediatric oncologist at PIMS, told us she is planning to expand the ward to 20 beds, and we understood her frustration of not being able to provide the care they deserve for lack of basic resources. I came back to my office in a totally different mood. It’s time to leave, and my colleagues and myself felt really sad, hardly hiding tears. It’s hard coming back to my “normality” after this, but I come back with the hope that projects like ours can save the lives of these children.

Thanks to Cure2children that made this possible and to my family that supported me in this journey, and to my friends that welcomed me home on my return to Italy.