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Helping Hands for Cancer Patients and Families

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Battling the life threatening disease of cancer at any age brings on many challenges, not just medically. Families of cancer patients can struggle to afford medications, hospital visits and room and boarding because of the distance from their homes to the medical center. In Tanzania, Dr. Kristin Schroeder created a program to build hostels near the Bugando Medical Centre to help those who aren’t able to make frequent visits to the hospital for therapy because of the distance. Since the program began in 2014, the hostels provide lodging for patients of all ages. Even with the caregivers on site and opportunities for breakfast and dinner, the hostels do not have many amenities and Eddah Lugala (YES 2013-2014, Tanzania, hosted by PAX in Cottonwood, AZ) wanted to help however she could. She began tutoring the children at the pediatric oncology hostels once a week and helped clean the hostel for cervical cancer patients.

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Eddah and other Bugando University students have been visiting the children’s hostel each Sunday to tutor subjects such as arithmetic, language (English and Kiswahili), reading and writing. Many of the children have a poor education because they miss school for their treatments. Some of the children are old enough to start school, but haven’t begun, so they are taught very basic concepts. Even though the university students only visit once a week, they have seen significant progress in the children’s education. They helped one young student simply how to properly write her name. Another student who will need to miss an entire academic year for his medications was very eager to learn with the tutors because he loves learning. Eddah fears that these children will lose their academic status because of missing their classes, but she is looking forward to helping the children so that doesn’t happen. 

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Eddah and other university students also aided at the cervical cancer hostel to help clean the building and visit with patients. Since there are not many workers staffed at the hostel at one time, the one nurse can only handle looking after the patients and helping with cooking and minor cleaning jobs. In addition to cleaning, Eddah and the other students shared a dinner with the 15 women who were staying at the hostel and attending clinics. Since many of them feel inferior because of their health status, the women become lonely and miss their families after being away for so long, so the visits provide a much needed morale boost. 

Eddah will be visiting the children’s hostel each week, and hopes to continue volunteering at the women’s hostel whenever she can. She realized the impact she and her fellow alumni are making after hearing one woman’s kind and uplifting thoughts. She said, “Together we can fight cancer and you being here today gives so much hope to all of us.”

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