Health care representatives, caring people, children with retinoblastoma (RB) and their families were also witnesses to the event. The event was hosted by Jia Renbing, Vice President of Shanghai Ninth People's Hospital.
Academician Fan Xianqun looked back, during his speech, on the original intention for founding the Retinoblastoma Care Foundation for Children, which was to help RB children inaccessible to treatments due to poverty. Ever since its foundation, more than 200 families have received aids from the Foundation, and many children had their vision and even their lives preserved. Fan Xianqun looks forward to the prospect that the Parent Volunteer Club for Children with Retinoblastoma would bring benefits and kindle the hopes for more RB-affected families in the future.
Guo Lian and Wu Zhengyi both expressed their gratitude and appreciation towards enterprises and caring people from all walks of life who donate to the Foundation. They highly acclaimed the selfless acts of the Foundation towards the economically disadvantages families who had RB-affected children to care.
During the event, Academician Fan Xianqun presented certificates of donation and certificates of gratitude to caring people and parent representatives. Wu Zhengyi, Guo Lian, children with RB and their families cut the inauguration cake for the Parent Volunteer Club for Children with Retinoblastoma. The parent volunteers were awarded with badges during the ceremony.
Ding Caoxin, a representative parent who donated to the Foundation, gave a speech narrating his personal experience as his child was diagnosed with RB and received treatments against RB. He then expressed gratitude towards the Ophthalmology Department of Shanghai Ninth People's Hospital and Retinoblastoma Care Foundation for Children. Xiao Ya, a patient representative, told her own story of fighting RB and encouraged all children with RB to actively cooperate with treatments and restore health.
At the scene of the ceremony, health care representatives from Shanghai Ninth People's Hospital gave gifts to children with RB to cerebrate Children’s Day. Gao Weiling, head nurse of the anesthesiology department, Zeng Changjuan, head nurse of the ophthalmology department, and Fan Jiayan and Han Minglei, directors of the ophthalmology department, participated in health education activities to answer questions raised by parents of children with RB.
RB is a malignant tumor originating from photoreceptor precursor cells and most commonly seen in children aged below 3. RB can be genetically inherited and affects one eye or two eyes successively or simultaneously. It is the most common primary intra-ocular malignancy of childhood worldwide, causing blindness, disability, or even death. RB can seriously impair children's visual acuity and threaten their lives. Unfortunately, some children with RB in China do not have the chance to preserve their eyes and lives due to economical reasons. There are even more families who are pushed back to poverty due to RB. To help more patients, the Ophthalmology Department of Shanghai Ninth People’s hospital took the lead in founding the Retinoblastoma Care Foundation for Children in June 2017, under the concerted efforts of some warm-hearted enterprises and individuals. Over the past six years, the Foundation has sponsored many economically disadvantages families from 16 provinces of China, including Xinjiang and Tibet, to preserve the eyes and lives of children with RB. Some parents who themselves have RB-affected children have also donated generously to the Foundation to pass the love to others.
The team led by Academician Fan Xianqun has carried out in-depth explorations into the pathogenesis of RB and advocated multidisciplinary diagnosis and treatment of RB that involve the departments of intervention, anesthesiology, and pediatrics. Early diagnosis and clinical management of RB have been innovated through their efforts, and an integrated sequential treatment regimen for RB has been established, which dramatically improves the survival rate and eye preservation rate of children with RB. Fan’s team makes Chinese voices heard in the RB field and contributes enormously to the leapfrog development of China’s diagnostic and therapeutic techniques for RB and rapid elevation of the overall treatment level. China used to follow other countries in RB diagnosis and treatment, but now China has the ability to lead in some aspects. Future efforts will be directed to understanding the pathogenesis of RB, innovating diagnostic and therapeutic techniques, normalizing the clinical diagnosis and treatment of RB, and further improving China’s overall healthcare level.
