Parents Must Increase Their Awareness on Childhood Cancer: IDAI

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Piprim Basarah Yanuarso, chairperson of the central board of the Indonesian Pediatrician Association (IDAI), on Saturday warned parents that cancer can attack children though their incidence is not as high when compared to adults.

However, Yanuarso said that cancer in children tends to be detected earlier in the midst of the fact that cancer cases in children are starting to show an increase.

“The earlier it is detected, the treatment is not as complex as treating cancer which has spread everywhere,” he informed at a webinar on Saturday.

He urged parents to increase early awareness of childhood cancer. If detected late, the treatment of such cancers tends to be more complex.

Meanwhile, Head of UKK Hematology Oncology at IDAI Teny Tjitra Sari said that children detected with cancer should have the opportunity to get treatment.

"This disease can be detected early. Therefore, the possibility of recovery is greater, and the medicine is not expensive. It's different from cancer that occurs in adults," she explained.

"(Cancer) in adults has a very special (medicine). It's completely devoted to the cancer. For children, the medicine is not expensive," she added.

Based on data on the prevalence of childhood cancer presented by IDAI, the most common type of cancer experienced by children is blood cancer or leukemia with the total number of cases pegged at 673.

The next common cancers are acute myeloblastic leukemia (144 cases), retinoblastoma (162 cases), osteosarcoma (91 cases), non-Hodgkin’s malignant lymphoma (75 cases), nephroblastoma (68 cases), and other non-epithelial kidney tumors.

They further include neuroblastoma (58 cases), rhabdomyosarcoma (53 cases), chronic myeloblastic leukemia (50 cases), and malignant gonadal germ cell tumors (47 cases).

ANTARA

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