Provide holistic support to needy children suffering from Cancer

Childhood cancers have a high rate of cure but medical treatment needs to be supported by an infection free, cheerful environment and proper nourishment.

Treatment may last as long as two years, but the child is not hospitalized all through this period. Needy parents from rural India bring their children suffering from cancer to large cities where low or zero cost treatment is available.

Clean safe accommodation is beyond their means and often these hapless families land up on streets next to the hospital where the child is being treated. The filth and squalor leaves them vulnerable to opportunistic secondary infections, which neutralise the effect of the treatment, with the result that proper hygienic food is not available for the child.

In despair parents often abandon treatment altogether.

In major cities of India where low-cost cancer treatment is available, children who need treatment for cancer and their parents come to hospitals from distant towns and villages.

The hospitals do not treat them as in patients during the long drawn out treatment and these needy families do not have a place to stay when the child is not admitted to hospital.

Hence, St Jude provides these families with free of cost housing, nutritional support, transportation to and from the hospital, counselling for the family and new skills for income generation, educational and recreational activities, art-based therapy, music therapy and yoga.

St.Jude is thus 'A home away from home' for these families

Today we are in 5 Cities; Mumbai/Delhi/Kolkata/Hyderabad and Jaipur. In 2006 we had started out with one centre in Mumbai with a capacity of 8 units. Today in 2015 we have 17 Centres with 211 family units.

Since our centres have been functioning, hospitals report fewer cases of abandonment of therapy. The chances of a child succumbing to secondary causes such as infection and malnutrition are significantly reduced and there is an overall improvement in the survival rates of childhood cancer in these hospitals.