CHARLES KONG SOO

Pan­cre­at­ic can­cer has the high­est mor­tal­i­ty rate of all can­cers be­cause of the mere fact that it shows no signs or symp­toms un­til it reach­es stage four. Ac­cord­ing to the Amer­i­can Can­cer So­ci­ety, for all stages com­bined, the one-year rel­a­tive sur­vival rate is 20 per cent and the five-year rate is sev­en per cent.

The John E Sab­ga Foun­da­tion (JESF) for Pan­cre­at­ic Can­cer through its part­ner­ship with world-renowned pan­cre­at­ic can­cer ex­pert Dr Daniel Von Hoff and the Trans­la­tion­al Ge­nomics Re­search In­sti­tute (TGen) in Phoenix, Ari­zona, are work­ing to­wards con­duct­ing the first of its kind clin­i­cal tri­al in T&T in hopes of com­ing clos­er to a cure for the dread­ed dis­ease.

JESF founder Na­tal­ie Sab­ga said “We have al­ready got­ten ap­proval for the "Sab­ga 1 Trinidad Tri­al" from the US FDA (Food and Drug Ad­min­is­tra­tion) and we have sub­mit­ted the pro­to­col to the ethics com­mit­tee lo­cal­ly for ap­proval. This study will on­ly be con­duct­ed in Trinidad and Ari­zona ini­tial­ly and will give our cit­i­zens the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ac­cess the lat­est ther­a­peu­tic agents for pan­cre­at­ic can­cer.

“We have a won­der­ful team of doc­tors on board this project who are ex­cit­ed to be in­volved in this in­ter­na­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion. They are Drs Olivia Dal­la Cos­ta, Ravi Ma­haraj, Karen Sealey, Kavi Capildeo, Dilip Dan, Vinay Minocha, Bri­an Ar­mour, Alexan­der Sinanan, Kel­lie Al­leyne Mike and Dy­lan Nar­i­nesingh.

Sab­ga, whose hus­band, John, passed away from the dis­ease on Jan­u­ary 26, 2017, and be­came the cat­a­lyst for her start­ing the foun­da­tion said the tri­al will be ex­pand­ed to more sites around the world once da­ta is col­lect­ed show­ing bet­ter out­comes for the pa­tient.

She said there had been no sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment in pan­cre­at­ic can­cer sur­vival rates for more than 40 years and the cur­rent drugs on­ly ex­tend­ed life by months.

Sab­ga said, there­fore, it was rec­om­mend­ed that even new­ly di­ag­nosed pa­tients go on a clin­i­cal tri­al as their first line of treat­ment. She said she was de­ter­mined to find that cure in John's name and was pas­sion­ate about bring­ing aware­ness and ed­u­ca­tion to the peo­ple whilst at the same time rais­ing mon­ey for re­search.

Sab­ga said hope must be cre­at­ed for the coun­try's fu­ture gen­er­a­tions.

UWI med stu­dents vol­un­teer with foun­da­tion

The JESF's op­er­a­tions con­sul­tant Lisa Ghany said af­ter see­ing the NGO's work at the St James Ra­dio­ther­a­py Cen­tre and at the Cau­ra Pal­lia­tive Hos­pi­tal, sev­er­al UWI first-year med­ical stu­dents ap­proached the foun­da­tion to do some hands-on work with pan­cre­at­ic can­cer pa­tients.

She said as part of the med­ical stu­dents' aca­d­e­m­ic cours­es they had to do a pro­gramme called the Pro­fes­sion­al­ism, Ethics and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion in Health mod­ule which re­quired do­ing prac­ti­cal hours in or­der to de­vel­op the skills in ethics and em­pa­thy need­ed to­wards pa­tients and their fam­i­lies.

The med­ical stu­dents are Tep­pa­ny Skin­ner, Jes­si­ca Las­tique, Amelia Rah­ming, Lean­ndra Man­gals­ingh, Sha­nia Saun­ders, Christi­na Dip­nar­ine and Farhaana Dan.

Christi­na Dip­nar­ine: I want­ed to study med­i­cine to find a cure for can­cer, which claimed my grand­moth­er

Christi­na Dip­nar­ine, 22 said her pas­sion was med­i­cine. She said she want­ed to study med­i­cine to help find a cure for the ter­ri­ble dis­ease can­cer, which claimed the life of her grand­moth­er as it had im­pact­ed her pro­found­ly.

Dip­nar­ine said can­cer was a slow and silent killer that crept up on peo­ple with­out warn­ing.

She said she would urge cit­i­zens to get reg­u­lar check-ups and take pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures as pre­ven­tion is bet­ter than cure.

Dip­nar­ine said, un­for­tu­nate­ly, her grand­moth­er died from cer­vi­cal can­cer but was mis­di­ag­nosed by her doc­tor and treat­ed for the wrong dis­ease. She rec­om­mends get­ting sec­ond and even third opin­ions to re­duce the chances of mis­di­ag­no­sis. She said de­spite the heavy crit­i­cism faced, doc­tors in T&T worked tire­less­ly to pro­vide for their pa­tients. Her aim as a doc­tor is to have a gen­uine im­pact on her pa­tients.

Dip­nar­ine and her col­leagues were at the Green Mar­ket in San­ta Cruz re­cent­ly along with JESF founder Na­tal­ie Sab­ga to raise aware­ness and ed­u­cate peo­ple on pan­cre­at­ic can­cer.

Jes­si­ca Las­tique: Med Stu­dents will de­vel­op ethics, em­pa­thy, com­pas­sion

UWI first-year med­ical stu­dent Jes­si­ca Las­tique said the pur­pose of their practicum in the Pro­fes­sion­al­ism, Ethics and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion in Health course was to de­vel­op knowl­edge and skills with prac­ti­cal and re­al-world ex­po­sure to the con­cepts that they had been learn­ing in the­o­ry.

She said the goal was to pro­vide a ser­vice to the gen­er­al pub­lic, and in do­ing so they will gain an ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the val­ue of serv­ing so­ci­ety.

Las­tique said through this practicum they will prac­tice com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills, ethics, em­pa­thy, and pro­fes­sion­al­ism that were in­te­gral to their de­vel­op­ment as com­pas­sion­ate, eth­i­cal health­care pro­fes­sion­als in the vo­ca­tion of med­i­cine.

She said the stu­dents de­cid­ed to part­ner with the foun­da­tion be­cause they ap­pre­ci­at­ed the im­por­tance of the work it was do­ing to raise pub­lic aware­ness and ed­u­ca­tion on pan­cre­at­ic can­cer.

Las­tique said the stu­dents were par­tic­u­lar­ly drawn to this foun­da­tion by its in­volve­ment in pa­tient sup­port pro­grammes such as the Nurse Nav­i­ga­tor Ini­tia­tive that pro­vid­ed the much-need­ed emo­tion­al and per­son­al sup­port that can make a huge dif­fer­ence in pa­tients’ qual­i­ty of life.

She said in­ter­act­ing di­rect­ly with pa­tients and the wider com­mu­ni­ty to con­nect with those that had been af­fect­ed by pan­cre­at­ic can­cer gave them the op­por­tu­ni­ty to sup­port the work of the JESF while gain­ing in­valu­able ex­pe­ri­ence em­ploy­ing the lessons they had been taught thus far.

Badal: JESF funds pan­cre­at­ic can­cer pa­tients to ac­cess CCRI's Can­cer Nav­i­ga­tor Pro­gramme

Kim­ber­ly Badal, co-founder and ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Caribbean Can­cer Re­search Ini­tia­tive (CCRI) said the John Sab­ga Foun­da­tion fund­ed pan­cre­at­ic can­cer pa­tients to ac­cess the CCRI's Can­cer Nav­i­ga­tor Pro­gramme.

She said through this pro­gramme, pa­tients were as­signed a nav­i­ga­tor whose role was to as­sess and ad­dress all bar­ri­ers to care or chal­lenges dur­ing the can­cer jour­ney.

Badal said CCRI's nav­i­ga­tors pro­vid­ed one-on-one sup­port, ed­u­ca­tion, and guid­ance while col­lect­ing da­ta for re­search.

She said since the pro­gramme was launched on No­vem­ber 10, 2018, five pan­cre­at­ic can­cer pa­tients had re­ceived 24 hours of per­son­alised nav­i­ga­tion time and care to date.

Peo­ple wish­ing to do­nate or vol­un­teer can do so through the foun­da­tion's web­site, www.johns­ab­ga.com or its Face­book page @ John Sab­ga Foun­da­tion or via phone 789-7930.