Local Mother Launches Petition Calling for Dedicated Children’s Oncology Wards

A new public petition is calling for the creation of dedicated oncology wards for children in Luxembourg.

Petitioner Julia Dauphinee is a local mother of two daughters, the older of whom was diagnosed with brain cancer in October 2018 aged just 20 months old. Caroline, now aged five, officially went into remission on 1 March 2020. However, her treatment and hospital appointments continue and, before that, her cancer journey was made even more challenging by the fact that she could not undergo chemotherapy in Luxembourg itself.

Whilst she could go to the CHL KannerKlink children’s hospital in Luxembourg for blood analyses and several other medical treatments, Caroline and her parents had to look elsewhere for chemotherapy since there were (and still are) no dedicated hospital rooms available for children in the Grand Duchy for this purpose. They ended up having to travel back and forth from Paris, France for about one and a half years, staying in Ronald McDonald House accommodation (set up specifically to support families with sick children) away from home.

Whilst Julia Dauphinee described the hospital staff in Paris positively, she noted that it was a very stressful experience – on top of an already extremely trying situation. “It was tasking morally and mentally”. She described the hospital experience in Luxembourg as more personal, partly because of the size of the Grand Duchy compared to Paris: “Luxembourg is like a village”, she said. There was the added comfort of being close to home and thus close to friends and family who could provide practical and moral support – something on which they could not rely when they had to travel to Paris.

"I have the highest respect for the healthcare staff here", she added. "The standard of care in Luxembourg is exceptional". Nevertheless, considering the experience of her own family and that of others with a child diagnosed with cancer, she felt that "we can definitely do better than this […] for kids and families". Consequently, she decided to launch a petition "to make a change" and "make things easier" for other families in similar situations in Luxembourg – even if it meant reliving her family's own challenging experience in some ways.

Caroline is now in school and is showing "amazing progress", according to her mother, who would like to "set a good example for her" and her younger sister, Claire, by making a positive change.

The aim of this petition, launched on Friday 25 March 2022, is thus to expand the paediatric oncology department at the KannerKlinik, namely by creating a dedicated oncology ward for children, in order to give them and their families the possibility of receiving life-saving treatments closer to home.

As the petitioner explained, every year in Luxembourg, between 20 and 30 children are diagnosed with cancer. This petition aims to strengthen Luxembourg's capacity by having the infrastructure necessary to provide treatment in the country for paediatric cancer patients while continuing to consult and work with major European oncology centres in Paris, Brussels and Heidelberg, among others.

The petition requires at least 4,500 signatures in order to lead to a public debate in the Chamber of Deputies (Luxembourg’s Parliament). At the time of writing, it has already garnered over 1,100 signatures (and counting).

This new public petition is open for signature on the petition website of the Chamber: https://www.petitiounen.lu/en/show-signatures/2232-2958?cHash=ea9bfd9c923a0a0a5570733fe431a07e&fbclid=IwAR0e0cW9UNqKHppGt4_OsZ34ch3hOQMKa7JH9ZDa7awav3Lhby1tNlGC0hk.