Twinning partnerships are an essential element of every project.  Poverty and complex cultural issues only partly account for the low survival rate of children with cancer in low to middle income countries.  A shortage of specialist healthcare professionals and a lack of awareness about childhood cancer symptoms and the possibility of curative treatment even amongst medics present major challenges.  

To redress the shortage of specialist healthcare professionals and lack of awareness about child cancer we develop twinning partnerships in which a hospital in a developing country is teamed up with an experienced hospital in a developed country. Through these partnerships vital medical expertise and skills are transferred between medics in developed and developing countries.  

Twinning partnerships provide important opportunities for training through mentoring programmes between senior doctors, visits by healthcare professionals to the hospital in the developing country to hold training workshops and regular internet tutorials or teleconference calls. 

The hospitals and healthcare professionals we work with from developed countries provide their expertise and time free of charge.  In fact, the value of their voluntary medical aid is valued at approximately two to three times the financial contribution of World Child Cancer ensuring that we can make a significant impact on improving diagnosis and treatment with relatively small amounts of funding.