SOS Call: Girl, 5, losing eyes to cancer

She looks bubbly and adorable on the outside but in the inside is a lonely toddler losing her future to cancer.

Nana Akosua is just five but has already lost an eye to cancer.

Even more pathetic is the fact that she is reeling under severe pain due to a brain tumor she has been suffering from for some time now. Doctors say she can lose the other eye if there are no urgent and immediate intervention to salvage her situation.

The tumor has eaten up her right eye and rendered her partially blind.

Her mother has left her job as a nurse at a hospital in the Brong Ahafo region to take care of little Nana.

“She woke up one day with both eyelids swollen, I took her to the eye clinic, and the ophthalmologist told me he suspected a tumor. We are just praying and praying, hoping it will go but it didn't,” her mother said in a grief-stricken interview with Starr News' Abena Owusu Nyamekye.

After several tests and CT scans the tumor was confirmed. Young Nana was referred to the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) in Kumasi.

“That word, that cancer itself; I didn’t want to hear, when they told me my girl had cancer it’s like I was as dead,” the helpless mother added.

According to statistics, two percent of almost all cancers in the world can be found in children. In the developed world, over 90 percent of the children diagnosed with cancer lived for more than five (5) years.

But the story is different in the developing world including Ghana because most children die from the disease five (5) years after diagnoses.

A resident Pediatrician at KATH, Dr Lawrence Osei Tutu revealed 23 deaths were recorded last year and more cancer cases are being recorded. Some of the commonest cancers at the hospital are Leukemia, brain and central nervous system tumors, lymphoma, retinoblastoma and rhabdomyosarcoma.

He has started a campaign on social media to create awareness and to raise funds to help cure such children like Nana who are suffering from childhood cancers.

Even as you read this article, Nana’s eyes are withering away. You can help save her future by contributing your widow’s mite. Kindly contact Starr FM via: info@starrfmonline.com