About the Cause
Poor health and nutrition negatively affect children’s school attendance and ability to learn. We implement school feeding programs that look for alternative ways to ensure sustainable supply of nutritious foods to school children and young people in urban and marginalized areas.
In addition, contaminated water and poor sanitation are big factors that result in the death of children worldwide. In our programs, we always include what is called WASH which means Water, Sanitation & Hygiene. This is done through the design and construction of child-friendly and gender sensitive facilities for sanitation, such as latrines and hand-washing stations. We also provide clean water supply by building water wells and raise awareness about the importance of sanitation and hygiene.
My Story
I am Rosendo Ticsay, a father of a 7-year-old son battling with cancer. We are seeking for help. Together with my wife, who is an average worker here in the UAE, we are raising money to sustain the medical treatment of our eldest son Luke Marzen Catacutan Ticsay. Luke was born on April 26,2013 with a congenital heart disease but, in spite of his heart condition, he is growing up to be a jolly, smart, sweet and a strong growing kid until a lymph node inflammation appeared in his neck area around September of last year. We didn't waste any time and got him checked in different hospitals until one hospital diagnosed him with T-Cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia on October 7, 2019. At that time, the company I have been working with cannot be able to provide us with a sufficient salary for a few months already and we don't have anything at hand except for our insurance we were counting on. It was last October 5, 2019 when we went to Al Jalila Children's Specialist Hospital Emergency, in which they agree to admit because of the child condition as per the previous hospital's reports and also the with the immediate check-up of doctors in ER, as the patient condition is life threatening. While we were in Al Jalila, the doctors diagnosed my son with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (T-Cell type). Knowing of the expensive procedure that will be done we were expecting our insurance to cover our medical bills, but they insist that it is not an emergency case and they will not cover it. We insisted, but to no avail. With the help of some hospital staff, they endorsed us at the hospital foundation to immediately begin with the treatments. Luke, being brave and cooperative with his side-to-side treatments (injections, laboratories, chemotherapies and other heartbreaking procedures for a 6 year old kid) showed quite a progress and was able to be discharged last November 7, 2019 with strict monitoring and supervisions of the hospital as an out-patient so as not also to incur additional bills in the hospital room as well. We are so thankful that the hospital continues to give Luke the needed medical treatment in spite of our outstanding hospital bills amounting to nearly 600,000.00 aed. We thank the foundation for funding this. And thanks to persistence of his doctors that his treatment should not be stop. As of now we are on his maintenance cycle of treatment which is his 4th month, which we only able to fund because of my wife loan application from their company & some pledges from our friends and other people, and already been exhausted and so I am afraid the treatment would be delayed because of a lack of funding in which with the chemotherapies alone will cost. The doctors told us that the approximate treatment for this case will be around three years. And they provided us cost estimate of around 200 thousand AED for the rest of treatment which exclude the emergency whenever he is getting fever and some infection as any other cancer patients are in risk of. And now for some reason, the hospital where Luke is getting his treatment will be close temporarily, And, so his doctor advice us to look for other hospital who can continue treating Luke. Unfortunately, we did not proceed with American hospital due to expensive cost and again not covered by the insurance, so upon knowing that we can try to go to Tawam Hospital for we heard they have a social welfare program who can help us with the expenses. But again we we’re denied with our application, again with insurance issue. The insurance keep on reasoning that we are going to a non-network covered institution, as a reason for rejecting our request but when we ask where network covered hospital we can go, they cannot present any. My son’s therapy has been delayed due to this.. So the nearest possibility is to raise some funds and go with the nearest available hospital who is capable of doing the intrathecal chemotherapy. And so we ended up at Dubai Hospital. We able to do the intrathecal chemotherapy but we have to shoulder the bill amounting to 18,000.00 AED for 1 day admission, Which we just issued a post dated check just to be able to be discharge. And now again my son will be scheduled for another intrathecal chemo on November 25, will still looking for funding for the previously amounted bill. Right now, I do not have a job, hands-on and fully dedicating my time taking care of Luke, going back and forth in the hospital (sometimes in successive days or also admitted for a few days as well). And my wife is a average income earner providing a four-member family. We heard about your good institution helping people in need of medical financial aid and we are coming to you and knocking on your kind hearts to please help us in this fight. Any amount will be of great help and a lot of prayers for Luke. Thank you and may God bless you abundantly.