This emotional strength has proven to be important when dealing with parents, too:

“While kids go through treatment it’s very hard on the parents. In many cases parents lose hope and become depressed, so we have to handle both patients and parents with proper counselling. Changing their mindset is the most challenging part.”

The emotional difficulties of childhood cancer amongst patients and their families is often well documented but the impacts it has on nurses can sometimes be pushed aside. These nurses have to deal with the pain and suffering of children daily, whom they often grow close to. This is all whilst having to handle the pressures of high workloads due to being understaffed and managing complex cancer treatments. It is a highly emotional and stressful job. In some of our programme countries, World Child Cancer provides psycho social support for nurses as well as the families so that they are able to cope with their jobs and effectively treat children with cancer. In order to maintain a high-quality of nursing, we also support vital training in paediatric oncology.

Dedicated nurses like Chandra are key to increasing survival rates for children with cancer in low-and middle-income countries. In many cases, if detected early enough, childhood cancers can be cured. As many as 80% of children with cancer survive in high income countries like the UK. This figure drops to as low as 10% in low and middle income countries like Nepal. 

Ensure that more children with cancer have nurses like Chandra caring for them by donating today.