The Combat for a Cure Foundation primary focus will be advocating for a change, raising the awareness of childhood cancer and funding the research towards the cure. The core issue of childhood cancer is that we lack funding for the research. There is a shortage in funding because there is no awareness. The childhood cancer community is very small. Unless you or a loved one has been effected by it,
you probably do not understand the true devastation of this disease. A lot of children diagnosed with cancer are diagnosed with a rare cancer. The average survival rate is about 30-50%. Childhood cancer is already under-funded so the majority of the monies will go towards the more common diagnostic, such as Leukemia which has a 90% cure rate vs neuroblastoma which has a 50% cure rate and a high chance of relapse. There is no cure for a relapse. The Combat for a Cure Foundation wants to focus on the rare of the rare diseases first. We want to give a voice to families that cannot be heard. Therefore we start funding the research towards the disease that are most often neglected. We cannot count on private pharmaceutical companies as the demand for this research is not lucrative for them. We need to advocate to for our government to step up and fund more than 4% of the NCI budget towards childhood cancer. Children diagnosed with cancer are being treated with adult treatments, which in return affects their development in the adult years, should they make it. According to our government officials, although childhood cancer is the #1 leading cause of death in children, the “small” number of children diagnosed is still too small to allocate any more funds for research. Bottom line is, money is standing in the way of curing our children.
