From Scotiabank  Initiative – Sick Kids Caribbean

Christmas is an emotional time of year and the emotions range from joy and happiness to sadness and loss as families meet and remember the year. This is a story about a Bahamian mother Ethel Emmanuel and her daughter Ginia Moss who is a cancer survivor. This Christmas they have a lot to celebrate and it is all possible through the tremendous support from the SickKids-Caribbean Initiative (SCI) in the Bahamas and the medical team led by Dr. Corrine Sin Quee-Brown.

SickKids-Caribbean Initiative

The Center for Global Child Health (C-GCH) at the Hospital for Sick Children in Canada, is a hub for global child health-focused activities, dedicated to research and capacity building in resource-constrained environments. In 2013, with the support of SickKids Foundation, C-GCH formed the SickKids-Caribbean Initiative a partnership with the University of the West Indies, ministries of health, hospitals and institutions in six Caribbean countries: The Bahamas, Barbados, Jamaica, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad & Tobago. This partnership focuses on building local capacity to diagnose, treat, and manage paediatric cancers and blood disorders that strive to improve the outcomes and quality of life for children with cancer and blood disorders.  

The Scotiabank Connection

SickKids-Caribbean Initiative is able to do this in the Caribbean with the support of Scotiabank that has been funding for several years the cost of facilitating teleconferencing facilities that enable the doctors and medical practitioners in the Caribbean to collaborate with their counterparts in Canada. The doctors are able to work on cases locally in the Caribbean without always having to send the kids overseas. For Scotiabank – this is definitely saving time and money, but most of all saving the lives of young people and giving them a future.

Mommy Ethel and her daughter Ginia

The journey for Ethel Emmanuel and her daughter Ginia Moss was a difficult one. Ethel points out, “Dr. Sin Quee Brown and the SickKids-Caribbean team helped us a lot and Ginia, now 14, is doing excellently.”

When Ginia was eleven, she started having pains at the back of her neck and she started to lose weight. Ginia was diagnosed with stage 2 cancer of the spine and Ethel remembers with anguish in her voice that she had to dig deep and be strong for her daughter. She said Ginia took a pragmatic approach by going online and finding out all she could on her illness keeping herself informed.

Ethel and Ginia then started to work with Dr. Sin Quee Brown and the team from SickKids-Caribbean. Ginia’s mom recalls that as soon as the cancer was discovered, her daughter underwent 36 weeks of chemotherapy. “At first she responded well to the treatment but after a while she started getting worse. She couldn’t walk and we had to use a wheelchair.”

The team from SickKids-Caribbean liaised with colleagues in Canada and arranged for Ginia to visit and undergo surgery. “It was after the surgery that things started to get better, we saw improvements. Going to Canada with my daughter for treatment was a good experience. Everybody was nice. We stayed there for three weeks.”

Ethel, who works at a wholesale club, said her entire family has rallied around in support of Ginia and she gives God thanks for the outcome because Ginia is doing well and planning to return to school soon.

Scotiabank salutes the Dr. Corinne Sin Quee-Brown and her team of pediatric hematologists/oncologists. We thank you all for the work you do to save our children and give comfort to worried families.

Below is an excerpt from Dr. Sin Quee-Brown taken from the 2017-2018 Annual Report of the SickKids-Caribbean Initiative?