sto­ries by RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Child rights am­bas­sador Sidara Akalloo and her moth­er, Su­ma­tee Akalloo, say they are com­mit­ted to work­ing with chil­dren bat­tling can­cer.

Sidara, who is now can­cer-free, un­der­went surgery last Tues­day to re­move a port catheter from her chest, mark­ing a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone in her jour­ney. The port catheter was used to ad­min­is­ter chemother­a­py dur­ing her treat­ment.

Her moth­er ex­pressed re­lief, say­ing, “Of­fi­cial­ly, every ev­i­dence of can­cer has now been re­moved. We hope it nev­er re­turns.”

Re­flect­ing on their jour­ney, Akalloo high­light­ed the re­silience Sidara dis­played through­out her bat­tle with can­cer and called for more pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion on child­hood can­cer.

“Teach­ers and stu­dents need to be ed­i­fied and made aware of this dis­ease and how it af­fects chil­dren. Every­one knows how it af­fects adults yet no one takes the time to think about chil­dren,” she said.

She re­count­ed an in­ci­dent where a young can­cer pa­tient, who is an am­putee was mis­treat­ed at school by a fel­low stu­dent for walk­ing too slow­ly with crutch­es.

“Why are can­cer chil­dren, or any child who is dif­fer­ent, made to feel they do not be­long?” she asked

Akalloo praised the med­ical team at Mount Hope Hos­pi­tal, in­clud­ing Dr Kevon Din­di­al, for their ded­i­ca­tion to en­sur­ing the com­fort of the young pa­tients and al­le­vi­at­ing par­ents’ con­cerns.

“He will do al­most any­thing to en­sure his chil­dren are com­fort­able and their par­ents at ease,” she said.

How­ev­er, she stressed that more sup­port and aware­ness are need­ed for fam­i­lies fac­ing the chal­lenges of child­hood can­cer.

Din­di­al echoed these sen­ti­ments, em­pha­sis­ing the fi­nan­cial strain on fam­i­lies when a child is di­ag­nosed with can­cer.

He said of­ten, one par­ent has to stop work­ing and fam­i­lies strug­gle to pro­vide trans­porta­tion and the nec­es­sary re­sources.

Dr Din­di­al high­light­ed the im­por­tance of sup­port for these fam­i­lies, recog­nis­ing that it goes be­yond med­ical care. He said 35 chil­dren are re­ceiv­ing ac­tive can­cer care in T&T, but not all of them are hos­pi­talised at the same time.

He cred­it­ed spe­cialised train­ing for doc­tors for the im­proved de­tec­tion rates and urged par­ents to be vig­i­lant for ear­ly signs of blood can­cer, such as per­sis­tent fevers, lethar­gy, pale­ness, easy bruis­ing, bumps, en­larged liv­er or spleen, per­sis­tent headaches, bone pains, and blood in the urine.

Sidara was di­ag­nosed with a com­mon type of blood can­cer, acute lym­phoblas­tic leukaemia in April 2021. She gained na­tion­al at­ten­tion when she con­tin­ued study­ing for the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment ex­am­i­na­tion while en­dur­ing ag­o­nis­ing pain from her can­cer treat­ments.

She lost mo­bil­i­ty and suf­fered bouts of mem­o­ry loss but de­spite her pain, she passed for her dream school, Na­pari­ma Girls High School, and won sev­er­al awards, in­clud­ing the 2022 Youth Cham­pi­on Dou­ble Cha­co­nia Award.

Any­one want­i­ng to con­tact Sidara and her fam­i­ly can call 686-7575.