St Jude India Childcare Centres (UK)

Our role at St Jude India ChildCare Centres UK is to raise funds and awareness at home and overseas to support charities in Asia that focus on supporting children recovering from disease. Our immediate focus is on children in India who are receiving treatment for cancer and who stay with one or both parents in charitable residential accommodation during the course of their treatment. These centres are run by our sister charity in India - St Jude India ChildCare Centres.

Our primary aim is to raise funds and donations in the UK that will enable the charity to fund grant applications from India in an effective way. Our focus is currently to fund St Jude India ChildCare exclusively, but we have the flexibility to support charities in India that have adopted a similar model.

We have the necessary authorisations to remit funds directly to India with minimum administration and cost, in fact 89% of donated funds we receive go to support our Children and their families.

Childhood cancers have a high rate of cure but medical treatment needs to be supported by an infection free, cheerful environment and proper nourishment. Treatment may last as long as two years, but the child is not hospitalised all through this period. Needy parents from rural India bring their children suffering from cancer to large cities where low or zero cost treatment is available.

Clean safe accommodation is beyond their means and often these families end up on streets next to the hospital where the child is being treated. This environment leaves them vulnerable to opportunistic secondary infections, which neutralises the effect of the treatment. In despair parents often abandon treatment altogether.

This is the gap that St Jude seeks to bridge, with its innovative model of holistic care.

Our hygienic, protective, nurturing environment gives these children the best chance of beating cancer, by allowing them to recuperate and lead a full, healthy life.

The survival rate of a St Jude Child is 82.7% compared to 30% normally