Nezha
Bidouane comes to aid of young cancer
victims
Mohammed Bencherif
(MAP) for the IAAF
14 January 2002 – Rabat, Morocco –
Two-time world champion at 400 metre
hurdles Nezha Bidouane is more than just
a great athlete; she may come from very
modest origins, but she is a woman with
a big heart who is always ready to help
those in need. This has done as much as
her prowess on the track to make her one
of the most popular athletes in Morocco.
Most recently, this great champion agreed to become a sponsor of the Avenir association made up of parents and friends of infants suffering from cancer. Her Royal Highness Princess Lalla Meryem, the elder sister of King Mohammed VI is the honorary President of the Association.
Bidouane, the most successful Moroccan woman athlete will work with the Association to help promote its fundraising activities and its campaigns to raise awareness in the community to aid prevention of the disease and help ease the suffering of young victims of cancer.
Following the creation of the “Maison de l’Avenir”, a medical facility where 80 sick children can be treated with their families and receive free of charge the expensive treatment necessary to combat the disease, the Association plans over the next two years to build a special hospital to treat cancer in youngsters, notably through the creation of a unit specializing in bone marrow transplants.
According to Bidouane, some 60% of victims are hospitalized and around 75% are treated and saved. Around half of the cases suffer from leukemia and lymphocytes.
For Nezha Bidouane, the charitable and humanitarian initiatives of l’Avenir – of which she has been a full-time member for three years, are a perfect expression of the principles of solidarity and assistance that underlie the Muslim faith. She underlines the fact that cancer is the third most important cause of mortality in Morocco.
She also says that, despite the commitment of the medical team at the Children’s Hospital of Rabat (Hôpital des Enfants de Rabat – HER), they are unable to assure an adequate role of treatment, training and research due to a lack of staff for the large number of patients they must handle, insufficient medicine and inadequate space.
The Moroccan Ministry of Health has made available to the Association, created in 1986, a piece of land next to the HER for the project, which will be the first of its type on the Continent and in the Arab world and which will enable the decentralisation of the treatment of child cancer, avoiding unnecessary transfers that are extremely costly both financially and in their incidence on the family and social levels.
Nezha does not hide her sympathy for these children struck by this most mortal of diseases: “Every day and every evening I think of these little angels who suffer from a terrible illness and who need so much affextion and moral support. This is why I want to lead this campaing to raise funds (3 million dollars) to build this cancer hospital specially for children,” she declares.
She recalls her first encounter with these young patients: “The idea to support this cause came three years ago, when I went to visit the children to take the F’tour (the meal at the end of the fasting period) one day in the month of the Ramadan. Since then we have built some deep and close relationships.”
With tears in her eyes, she recalls in particular a young girls, eleven years of age who insisted on seeing her before she died: “Zahra said to Professor Faouzia M’seffeur Alaoui, the president of the Association, that she wanted to see `auntie' Nezha. The president called me and I rushed to the hospital. Zahra embraced me really strongly and just a few hours later passed away..”