Following Aladina’s donation of 160,000 dollars to the City of Smile organisation, which provides treatment for children suffering from cancer, this weekend the Aladina Foundation had the opportunity to meet the organisation and the Armenian children who receive support from it in person.
Tamara Apoyan, Communications Director of City of Smile, warmly welcomed the Aladina team and stressed that they will never forget the Spanish help at a time of severe health crisis. Children like Alex and Maria, shown in the photographs, are the ones who have benefited from the donation.
In Armenia, the health system is only able to cover a small part of the cost of cancer treatment. Around 70% of the total cost is borne by the patient’s family, in a country where more than 30% of the population lives below the poverty line. In 2020, the armed conflict in Armenia ended and, as the country began to rebuild from the war, it also faced a situation that brought the whole planet to a standstill: Covid-19. In this situation of severe health and economic crisis, the country’s children with cancer were affected threefold by war, poverty and disease.
This donation, which is part of Aladina International’s aid programme to support foreign entities in at-risk health situations, covered the treatment costs of between 90 and 100 children and adolescents without resources for two months. This number is equivalent to the annual number of new paediatric cancer diagnoses in the country.
