Ukraine

Ukrainian children with cancer in need for treatment continuation

SSPHO Position Paper

Dear SSPHO members

We all agree, with respect to the war in the Ukraine it needs all possible efforts to alleviate this humanitarian tragedy.

The numbers of people leaving the Ukraine for one of the contiguous European countries is unbelievably growing day by day, the majority passing the Polish border. Among them are children with hemato-oncologic diseases, urgently requiring continuation of clinical care and treatment.

Estimations on the total number of Ukrainian children in need for cancer treatment are as high as 1000. This means, several hundred families have to find shelter and continuation of cancer treatment outside of the Ukraine.

Poland has reached its limits to take care of these children and needs instant and

unbureaucratic support by European Clinics for Pediatric Hematology and Oncology to continue care and treatment for these children.

All organisations in the field of pediatric oncology, including SIOP, SIOPE, the German GPOH, CCI and the St. Jude Global Team, to name just some of them, have started enormous efforts to coordinate the transition of these children to pediatric hemato-oncologic clinics in the US and Europe.

It is a matter of course that Switzerland will contribute whatever is needed and possible to help in this critical situation.

All Swiss PHO clinics are willing to take over care and continuation of treatment of such patients, depending on their capacities.

In order to keep things as easy and uncomplicated as possible, the station heads of the Swiss PHO clinics have agreed on the following procedure, that has been communicated to all coordinating organisations:

• Instead of contacting a certain clinic individually, we prefer requests to be addressed at the PHO society’s e-mail-address: info@sspho.ch

• The SSPHO board then will contact the clinics according to the family’s situation and needs and check the capacities and availabilities within Switzerland.

• As soon as we get a request, the SSPHO will get back to the coordinators who have addressed the request in order to move forward fast with the respective family.This way we do not have to fix numbers of beds each centre is able to offer, the patients will be admitted according to actual capacities.

Our estimated capacity in Switzerland to take care for children under cancer treatment is around

15-20 patients right now, likely to be considerably more in due course.

The Swiss national government has decided to accept arriving Ukrainian families as refugees in an unbureaucratic way without visa and without the regular procedures.

This means they are all health insured and provided with all social rights.

With respect to social assistance for the patients and their families, we are happy to closely cooperate with Childhood Cancer Switzerland as well as Kinderkrebshilfe Schweiz and Zoé4life. They have taken the responsibility to take care of and coordinate all issues to provide shelter and social assistance for the families.

We stay in close contact to coordinate our activities in order to find the most suitable solution for a family within the shortest possible timeframe.

Until now, Germany has taken over more than 50 patients and families.

For Switzerland, we expect a request for this week as St. Judes Global Team is going to plan a transport for Switzerland. We will keep you informed on how things are evolving.

We do try to get and coordinate requests in a centralised way via SSPHO.

Yet, there may be and already have been requests addressed to an individual clinic.

If you are approached directly or if you hear of children with cancer arriving in Switzerland, please do forward the request by contacting info@sspho.ch, thank you!

I am happy about our unanimous common position as the Swiss PHO community to offer all possible support in case we are contacted individually or as a professional society - thank you all for your support and help!

Please do not hesitate to contact info@sspho.ch for all issues, questions and informations concerning Ukrainian cancer patients in Switzerland, we will get back to you in a timely manner.

And, of course, we keep you updated!

Jeanette Greiner SSPHO president