Diagnosis of childhood cancer has a devastating effect on a family, but a new app in Spain aims to give parents and children the practical and emotional support they need.
Paula Rodriguez created the Spanish app “Vivire con un Cencer Infantil” (Living with childhood cancer) that helps people monitor the symptoms of childhood cancer.
“When your child is diagnosed with cancer, a lot of emotions accumulate,” she said.
“These include fear, uncertainty, anger, misunderstanding and we get over a lot of data such as diagnoses, prognoses, treatments, surgeries and transfers to other hospitals.”
The app aims to engage with and inform families through the healing process.
The device has a five-section tablet that monitors medical appointments, tests, emotions, as well as pain the child experiences through exercise.
The application then provides graphs to families so that they can see an evolution of symptoms to help provide them with more support.
Each year, an estimated 400,000 children and teenagers under the age of 20 are diagnosed with cancer.
The survival rate will depend on where you were born. Most high-income countries have an 80% survival rate but that rate can fall as low as 20% in low-income and mIddle countries.
The World Health Organisation’s Global Childhood Cancer Initiative aims to eradicate the pain and suffering of cancer-fighting children and achieve a survival rate of at least 60% for all children diagnosed with cancer throughout the world. the world by 2030.
This would represent an estimated doubling of the current standard of treatment and save an additional one million million lives over the next decade.
February 15 is International Childhood Cancer Day.
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