Child­ren with can­cer are given a chan­ce at life

Möhnesee/Essen, 2025-03-27. Until now, the­re has been no pos­si­bi­li­ty to tre­at child­ren with can­cer in Eritrea. Each year, an esti­ma­ted 500 child­ren are dia­gno­sed with can­cer the­re – pre­vious­ly wit­hout any medi­cal care. Thanks to Arche­me­d’s com­mit­ment and the sup­port of the RTL Foun­da­ti­on, the coun­try­’s first pedia­tric onco­lo­gy unit was ope­ned on Febru­ary 13, 2025, under the pro­ject lea­der­ship of Prof. Dr. Uta Dirk­sen from Uni­ver­si­ty Hos­pi­tal Essen. The new sec­tion of the child­ren’s hos­pi­tal at Orot­ta Hos­pi­tal in Asma­ra was inau­gu­ra­ted during an offi­ci­al cerem­o­ny. This marks the first time that child­ren with can­cer in Eritrea will have a rea­li­stic chan­ce of reco­very.

The ope­ning of the new ward marks the begin­ning of a pio­nee­ring pro­ject: Archemed has set the goal of estab­li­shing sus­tainable and effec­ti­ve can­cer tre­at­ment for child­ren in Eritrea. In addi­ti­on to reno­vat­ing the ward, doc­tors and nur­ses will be trai­ned by the Ger­man team from Essen. This is becau­se the tre­at­ment of onco­lo­gi­cal dise­a­ses requi­res spe­cia­li­zed know­ledge and adhe­rence to stan­dar­di­zed the­ra­pies.

The initi­al focus of the work is on trea­ting two par­ti­cu­lar­ly cura­ble types of can­cer: the so-cal­led Wilms tumor, a kid­ney tumor, and Hodgkin lym­pho­ma. Even befo­re the offi­ci­al ope­ning of the ward, the first child in Eritrea with Hodgkin lym­pho­ma was trea­ted – a signi­fi­cant mile­stone. “It was a joy for our team to see our work bear fruit – the num­e­rous work­shops and trai­ning ses­si­ons pro­ved suc­cessful,” explains Prof. Dr. Uta Dirk­sen, “it is par­ti­cu­lar­ly encou­ra­ging that our Eri­tre­an col­le­agues can now car­ry out tre­at­ments inde­pendent­ly.”

In addi­ti­on to medi­cal care, the docu­men­ta­ti­on of tre­at­ment suc­ces­ses plays a cen­tral role. Through struc­tu­red data coll­ec­tion, the aim is to tre­at more and more types of can­cer and fur­ther impro­ve the­ra­pies in the long term. “Our goal is to gra­du­al­ly build up local know-how so that, in the long term, more and more child­ren with can­cer in Eritrea recei­ve a rea­li­stic chan­ce of reco­very,” Prof. Dirk­sen con­ti­nues.

The ope­ning of the pedia­tric onco­lo­gy unit is a signi­fi­cant step for health­ca­re in Eritrea. Arche­me­d’s work will con­ti­nue even after the com­ple­ti­on of the con­s­truc­tion. Trai­ning, tech­ni­cal main­ten­an­ce, and medi­cal fur­ther edu­ca­ti­on ensu­re the sus­tainable deve­lo­p­ment of the pro­ject.

Archemed requests dona­ti­ons for the con­tin­ued sup­port of pedia­tric onco­lo­gy in Eritrea: www.archemed.org/spenden, Dona­ti­on account IBAN: DE63 4145 0075 0000 0882 03 (Spar­kas­se Hell­weg-Lip­pe)