September is Pediatric Cancer Month and according to the Que website, this disease--manifested in leukemia and neuroblastoma--is killing children daily in the United States.
According to the article, in 2012, 12,600 cases were diagnosed in children with cancer. The successful treatments against cancer were acute lymphoblastic leukemia with 90 percent of successful cases, while nauroblastoma had a 70 to 80 percent success rate.
Guillermo De Angulo, pediatric oncologist of the Miami Childrens Hospital was quoted as explaining that there is only 10 percent of cancer-related research in children compared with adults, and according to the news site, cancer is the disease that kills more children but it's less manifested in adults.
The doctor stated "It is rare that a pharmaceutical company invests in a type of tumor that occurs in children, because most cases occur in adults. Bigger companies prefer to invest in lung cancer rather than neuroblastoma because the first one has many more cases."
The Que site shared the case of Raymond Rodriguez and Bella, his 10-year-old daughter who was diagnosed with stage 4 alveolar rhabdomysacroma that left the girl quickly paralyzed. After she was able to walk again, she lost the battle because of a metastasis in her abdomen which caused her death, prompting her parents to create the LivelikeBella Foundation in order to help pediatric cancer research.
Bella's father told the EFE news agency that "each parent has a story, some people tell you that my son had a little pain in his leg and they thought it was part of growing up, or, my daughter had a migrain", while specialist De Angulo explained that the manifestations of such tumors are similar to other diseases in children.
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