Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama has revealed that this year alone WOWS Kids Fiji has supported 63 children in Fiji, spending an average of $9,000 per child each month to provide transportation, treatment, and medical supplies.
While speaking at the Black Tie Charity Ball in Sydney, Bainimarama says WOWS also assists in ways that go beyond the hospital by helping with some of the less obvious costs of treatment, like accommodation costs for children and their families, and phone card top‑ups that allow them to stay in constant contact with their doctors and WOWS support team.
He says last year the Ministry of Health, with the Fiji Cancer Society and WOWs Kids, signed the World Cancer Declaration, with the goal of reducing the preventable mortality rate of cancer patients in Fiji.
The Prime Minister says that the Minister for Health Rosy Akbar recently shared a statistic which gave him hope and that was in just the past five years, the survival rate of common childhood cancers had more than doubled in Fiji.
Bainimarama adds that Cancer is the third leading cause of death in Fiji, and the types of childhood cancer that WOWS deals with are leukemia, brain and bone cancer.
He thanked the people at the event for their generosity as the funds raised from the charity ball will have a direct impact on Fijian lives.
He says the beneficiary of the event, WOWS Kids Fiji, will be able to help more of Fiji’s children to “Walk On Walk Strong.”
