New hope for child cancer victims comes to Lebanon

Lebanese news - May 8, 2001

New hope for child cancer victims comes to Lebanon

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More than 60 years ago, Arab-American entertainer Danny Thomas, then a struggling young artist with $7 in his pocket, got down on his knees in a Detroit church before a statue of St. Jude Thaddeus, patron saint of desperate cases, to ask for guidance.
“Show me my way in life,” pleaded the young man.
As the fifth of 10 children born to Lebanese emigrants, Thomas (born Muzyad Yaqoub) knew what it meant to work hard for his money he had spent his childhood as a street vendor.
Little did he know that the “shrine” he built in honor of St. Jude years later when he was a famous comedian/actor the St. Jude Research Hospital would save thousands of children worldwide including those in the land of his forefathers, Lebanon.
As part of Thomas’ dream to care for children with cancer worldwide, St. Jude’s International Outreach Program has extended the center’s expertise to benefit child patients in Lebanon and Syria, assisting in establishing facilities, effective treatment protocols, generating educational opportunities, and collaborative research projects.
“Thomas’ benevolent spirit and his famous words, ‘no child should die in the dawn of life’ has touched the lives of so many. Now children in Lebanon and Syria will also benefit from his humanitarian efforts,” said Lebanese pediatrician Dr. Ibrahim Dabbous.
Dabbous will be on the board of directors of St. Jude Research Hospital’s affiliated center in Lebanon when it opens at the American University of Beirut’s medical center in November 2001. The fully-equipped center constitutes an entire floor at the medical center and includes clinics, laboratories, and a pharmacy as well as 12 assigned beds for patients at the American University Hospital.
Since it was established in 1962, St. Jude Research Hospital has treated more than 16,000 children across America and in 60 foreign countries regardless of race, religious affiliation, ethnic background or the family’s ability to pay for therapy.
With headquarters in Memphis, Tennessee and an annual operating budget of $200 million, the internationally-renowned clinical research center has affiliated facilities around the world which benefit from exchange programs and the sharing of medical research and data.
The Lebanon-based center is being built within the pediatrics department at AUB, but will function as a separate entity and will be available to Lebanese and Syrians. There are not yet statistics on cancer cases and survival rates for Syria, and the data for Lebanon is an estimate. The St. Jude center will fill the gap by serving as a source for national statistics. Dabbous estimated that for every 100,000 children in Lebanon, four are diagnosed every year with cancer. More than 55 percent of the cancers are diagnosed as leukemia.
“Contrary to what everyone else says, we owe a lot to the government,” he said. “If it weren’t for the government’s efforts to provide free cancer treatment, about 300 child cancer patients would die every year.”
The health care system in Lebanon has an excellent medical track record when it comes to cancer treatment, especially in the past 10 years where survival rates are comparable to those in the United States, Dabbous reported. He estimated the success rate in the US is between 70-80 percent, while AUH’s success rate is 74 percent. Dabbous explained that now, because of the efforts of humanitarians like Thomas, as well as improvements in medical research of pediatric leukemias and tumors, he no longer gets depressed when he diagnoses a child with cancer.
“Oncological breakthroughs over the past 30 years have resulted in a drastic improvement in survival rates of young cancer patients,” Dabbous said. He used statistics compiled by St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital comparing cancer survival rates of children treated at their hospital in 1962 and 1997 to back up his argument.
At the hospital in 1962, the survival rate of patients suffering from Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia was only four percent, while in 1997 patients were more hopeful with a 73 percent survival rate. Similarly, whereas in 1962 sufferers of Hodgkin Disease and Wilms Tumor had 50 percent survival rates, in 1997 they enjoyed 90 percent survival rates.
“After treatment is administered I can feel gratified as I watch my former child patients grow up, get married, and have children of their own. You don’t know the feeling that it gives a doctor like myself,” Dabbous said with pride, as if he were talking about his own children.
He reported that in the United States, St. Jude treats between 400-500 patients every day and patients are provided with long distance consultations after they return home.
Like the US-based St. Jude, the center in Beirut will feature the After Completion of Therapy Clinic program, whereby all patients will be examined at least once annually for five to 10 years and screened for any residual disease or treatment effects.
“I stress that it won’t be a hospital, as such, but will be a therapeutic center where patients will be provided with continuous care on an outboard basis,” Dabbous said.
Treatment will cost as much as other health care for cancer patients, he reported, but in circumstances where the family is unable to pay the full amount the center will subsidize the remaining amount.
“We’re going to start with 50 patients and then continue with more since our facility is much smaller than St. Jude headquarters in Memphis,” Dabbous said. “It’s not our intention to take patients away from their doctors, but the center will serve as a point of reference in the area, with the most up-to-date treatment methods and medical equipment. We do hope that with more funding we will able to treat more patients.”
In order to do this, the center will need a continuous flow of funding. According to Dabbous, the center has already amassed a sizable start-up budget made up of donations from philanthropists of Lebanese descent living abroad.
“You’ll be surprised to know just how charitable people are in Lebanon. We already have private and institutional donors including Rafik Hariri and An-Nahar newspaper,” he said.
Thomas, who died in 1991 at age 77, started raising money in the early 1950s for St. Jude by crossing the United States by car, talking about his dream and raising funds at benefits. He found an enormous amount of support in his fellow Arab-Americans. By 1957, 100 representatives of the Arab-American community met in Chicago to form the American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities, with the sole purpose of raising funds for the support of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
Today, the charity is the seventh largest not-for-profit fund-raising organization in America and is supported by the efforts of more than a million volunteers from different ethnic, religious, and racial backgrounds.
At the St. Jude Hospital in Memphis, the American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities covers all treatment costs beyond those reimbursed by third-party insurers, and all costs when no insurance is available. In Beirut, however, treatment at the center will only be partially covered.
“I hope one day we can have a strong fund-raising arm here in Lebanon so that we can provide more health care for more sick children,” Dabbous said. “In the meantime, we can only subsidize some of the medical fees if we find the family cannot pay for it.”
Meanwhile, Lebanese doctors, nurses, and pharmacists are already benefiting from St. Jude expertise with the most up-to-date treatment techniques. Medical students and physicians will have the opportunity to work closely with world-renowned senior faculty members, including St. Jude Research Center Immunology Department Chair Peter C. Doherty, winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine.
Dabbous is also concerned about the psychological well-being of his patients and their families. One of the most important ideas Dabbous proposes is the formation of support groups for the families of young patients: “The Association of Pediatricians has built the roots of support groups for families to cooperate, meet and discuss their children’s conditions and provide support for one another in times of bereavement,” he said.
If a parent’s child dies and there is medication remaining, they can give it to another family whose child needs treatment.
“At times it’s simply a matter of exchanging updates on cancer treatment breakthroughs that they hear about,” Doherty said. “That can make a big difference in the lives of these families.”

Lana Captan