Tata Memorial organises sports fest for kids with cancer | Mumbai news

MUMBAI: On a sunny Thursday afternoon, the medical doctors’ eating room at Tata Memorial Hospital’s (TMH) Golden Jubilee constructing in Parel is buzzing with pleased paediatric most cancers survivors being coached in chess, desk tennis, carrom and 6 different sports activities. They’re among the many 250-odd paediatric most cancers survivors from town’s eight hospitals who will take part in Nabhaangan 2024, the primary sports activities fest for youngsters with most cancers organised by TMH this weekend on the Andheri Sports activities Advanced.

“As part of the paediatric oncology division’s After Completion of Remedy (ACT) clinic and survivorship program, we started encouraging most cancers survivors to take part in sporting actions and would ship them to the World Kids’s Winners’ Video games in Russia six years in the past,” mentioned Shalini Jatia, officer-in-charge of TMH’s ImPaCCT Basis. “Since then, greater than 60 kids have gotten into sports activities, of which a handful have taken it up severely.” After the Covid-19 pandemic put a cease to sending kids overseas, TMC, together with NGO Duhita Basis, conceptualised Nabhaangan in order that as a substitute of a handful of most cancers survivors, extra kids may take part.

“Nabhaangan is a Sanskrit phrase, which implies the courtyard of the sky,” mentioned Jatia. “We wish our paediatric most cancers survivors to rise as much as the sky and shine vivid. Ever since we introduced the sports activities fest, the ambiance in our division and amongst our sufferers has modified from remedy to pleasure.” The 250 members—paediatric most cancers survivors, sufferers on upkeep chemotherapy and thalassemia sufferers put up their transplant—will participate in rifle capturing, relay races, desk tennis, swimming, chess and badminton.

Standing in a single nook of the TMH eating room and watching her son being coached in desk tennis, Mubasshra Khan is radiant. “I’ve by no means seen my son as pleased and excited within the final ten months of his blood most cancers remedy journey,” mentioned the Ahmednagar resident, whose son is being handled on the civic-run LTMG Sion Hospital. “He will probably be present process chemotherapy on April 12 and his final chemotherapy per week later. He was very cranky and always pleading to go residence. Nonetheless, once I enrolled him for Nabhaangan and introduced him to TMH for rehearsals, I noticed him all excited. He needs to take part in each sport.”

Yatharth Pathak (12), a most cancers survivor who mentioned he could be collaborating within the 100-metre dash, 400-metre relay, chess and soccer, is equally excited. “I’m trying ahead to collaborating and positive of profitable too,” he mentioned.

Dr Shripad Banavali, director of lecturers at TMC, mentioned that most cancers was a illness of immunity and a method to enhance immunity was via bodily exercise and video games. “At Tata Hospital, we aren’t simply concentrating on the remedy facet however serving to sufferers to have a greater life,” he mentioned. Dr Banavali added that yearly, TMH noticed roughly 4,000 new paediatric sufferers. “With developments in paediatric most cancers remedy, the survival price has reached a powerful 80 %,” he mentioned. “By introducing them to sporting actions, we’re guiding the survivors in the direction of the chance to guide a standard life.”

Nandini Save (49) of Duhita Basis, which works with paediatric most cancers sufferers and guides them with sports activities teaching, mentioned that for the fest they might be selecting kids who had the potential to additional take part in district, state and nationwide degree sports activities. Save misplaced her 12-year-old daughter Duhita to most cancers, and mentioned it was throughout her daughter’s remedy that she noticed how sports activities actions helped in most cancers remedy.

“We misplaced her in 2014,” she mentioned. “It was her dream to go to Russia and take part within the video games. Since then, we’ve been guiding paediatric most cancers sufferers in numerous sporting actions. Within the final two days, we’ve introduced in coaches to information the members. The kids are right here from 12 o’clock to six o’clock. Sports activities and the fest will assist enhance their confidence.”

Jatia mentioned that whereas they’d restricted the variety of members to 250, subsequent yr they deliberate to carry the fest on the nationwide degree. “This will probably be a pilot run earlier than a much bigger match subsequent yr,” she mentioned. “We may have members from hospitals throughout the nation, and it’ll actually be on the traces of the World Kids’s Winners Video games in Russia.”