London: Tooba Khalid and husband Usman Azam, the parents of a three-year-old girl Maham, have launched an appeal to raise £100,000 to treat their daughter who is suffering from a deadly brain tumour. The girl has to be sent to the Czech Republic to undergo proton beam therapy which is not available in NHS hospitals. In June the parents were told that the cancer of their daughter had returned and she had another operation on July 19 to remove the regrown tumour. Doctors recommended radiotherapy to prevent the cancer spreading. They are in a race against time for her to receive proton beam therapy, which delivers higher doses with less damage to healthy surrounding tissue.
Doctors in Prague have reviewed Maham’s scans and are willing to offer the treatment, which would last six weeks and cost £95,000. The girl has to receive the proton therapy within four to six weeks after the surgery. Dr Yen-Ching Chang, the consultant oncologist treating Maham, told her parents, who live in Beckton, that proton beam therapy “would offer the same chance of cure as [X-ray] photon therapy” but “may offer an advantage” in cutting the risk of secondary cancers or other side effects.
Maham was 10 months old when she was first diagnosed in January 2015 with a stage four medulloblastoma tumour “the size of a golf ball” in the back of her head. She had a 10-hour operation, during which she suffered major blood loss and a cardiac arrest. Eight months of chemotherapy left her unable to walk or eat solid food, and with sight and hearing problems.
