Last Updated on Wednesday, 26 August 2020, 8:13 by Denis Chabrol
The Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company (GTT) says it has gifted forty cancer patients with a total of 120 COVID-19 food hampers over the past three months.
The food relief was distributed by the Beacon Foundation through a $500,000GYD Pinktober grant from GTT.
GTT’s Pinktober Coordinator, Diana Gittens, explained that the goal of the grant was to meet the nutritional needs and reduce the financial burden of cancer patients and their families. The hampers included food items that catered directly to the nutritional requirements of palliative cancer patients. “Cancer patients, like the other non-communicable disease patients, are greatly affected by COVID-19 and need the support of their communities,” Gittens said.
Nurse at the Beacon Foundation, Bibi Salim expressed gratitude for the assistance provided to the families. “We applied for the Pinktober grant because many of the families of the patients we provide care for could not provide nutritious meals due to the impact of COVID-19 on all of us. In this way, we took the burden from the families to provide these nutritional meals,” Salim said.
She added, “Many patients could do very little for themselves and depended highly on caregivers to help with meals and other daily necessities; since most caregivers were relieved of their jobs due to COVID, this grant came at an opportune time.”
According to a grant report submitted by the Beacon Foundation, 72.5% of the recipients were diagnosed with stages III and IV cancers, which are considered advanced stages of cancer.
GTT, through its Pinktober Fund, continues to look for opportunities for the company to assist cancer patients and encourages all cancer-related NGOs to apply for access to grants.
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