【NIA Global News】／written by Amy Hsieh
According to CNA, a 21-month-old Malaysian child (Ng Zi Heng) with leukemia has successfully recovered after undergoing a year of treatment at Taichung Veterans General Hospital. He will soon return back to Malaysia with his family.
At first, Ng Zi Heng and his family lives in Malaysia. Zi Heng’s parents noticed that his appetite was low and they found a lump in his stomach when he was six weeks after birth. Then Heng was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia when he was eight weeks old.
CNA also mentioned, Zi Heng began receiving chemotherapy in Malaysia, but suffered repeated infections and recurrences of the cancer. At one point, doctors even advised his parents to give up on treating the child, but they refused.
After receiving the hear-breaking information, Zi Heng’s parents never gave up. With help from a Malaysian charity, the family was able to raise NT$5 million (US$176,930) in two days to cover the estimated costs of Zi Heng's treatment, and the family arrived here in November 2019.
CNA says, Zi Heng's mother sent an email to Taichung Veterans General Hospital, and hospitals in the United States and Singapore.
The only positive response she received was from doctor Huang Fang-liang (黃芳亮), the head of Hematology and Oncology at the Taichung hospital's Children's Medical Center, who proposed a treatment plan.
Taichung Veterans General Hospital is the only public medical center in the central part of Taiwan. The Department of Children's Hematology and Oncology treats about 40 to 50 children with new-found cancer each year. During the past years, more than 100 children have completed bone marrow hematopoietic stem cell transplantation
And after Zi Heng received a cord blood stem cell transplant in March 2020, Zi Heng finally recovered and is now cancer-free.
His mother says, “I am very thankful of Taichung Veterans General Hospital, they took good care of my child. Now our family are going back to Malaysia in March with hope.”
