Impact Report

Mark

Location: Philippines General Hospital, Manila, Philippines

Little Mark is a small thin boy with huge brown eyes.  He is pale and lethargic for a six-year-old.  His mother, Rosie, is soft spoken and looks tired – with good reason.  Her hands are full: both of her boys have hemophilia and Mark just recently had another bleed.

Hemophilia causes a protein deficiency in the blood, which prevents clots from forming. Uncontrollable bleeding can occur from even minor wounds.  Patients like Mark frequently experience spontaneous internal bleeding, often in their joints.

After navigating the difficult two-hour trip through Manila to the Philippines General Hospital Mark and his mom find a bad situation.  The hospital has run out of even the relatively primitive hemophilia treatment of cryo—basically frozen concentrated plasma. For four painful and endless days they must wait until supplies of the cryo can be obtained.  Sadly this scenario is not uncommon.

The cyro will help a bit when it arrives, but doctors now universally prefer newer and much improved medications, like Pfizer’s ReFacto.  ReFacto provides a replacement for the protein missing in a hemophilia patient’s blood.  Unfortunately, in developing countries like the Philippines modern drugs like this have not been readily available.

With the help of our generous supporters, and our partnership with Pfizer, NCC has secured a large donation of ReFacto for the Philippines General Hospital. This will be a giant step ahead for low-income patients like Mark. Mark’s father makes less than $50.00 US a month, which leaves the family desperately poor.  They can barely afford to live, much less purchase any of the medications Mark and his brother need. 

With the NCC donation, Mark and his brother will experience modern hemophilia treatment for the first time. 

Make a donation today and help patients like Mark live with less pain and more mobility.
Read more about NCC’s work in the Philippines.

Background Information

Donations from the National Cancer Coalition of the Pfizer drug, ReFacto, offer a modern and effective therapy for treating hemophilia to underserved populations in the developing world.  To date these donations have changed lives in Nicaragua, Belize, Columbia, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Jamaica, Moldova, Paraguay, Peru, the Philippines, Tanzania, and Uzbekistan.

Replacing the older and less successful plasma treatments as a method of blood coagulation, ReFacto supplies a recombinant form of the Factor VIII protein missing from the blood of a patient with Hemophilia A.  This is a great leap forward in the management of hemophilia crises.  The devastating problems of plasma allergies are eliminated and bleeding, along with the resulting complications, are minimized before permanent damage can accumulate. These donations of Factor VIII replacement give low-income patients around the world the opportunity to manage this severe disease and become more productive citizens.

NCC Cares - Pfizer - Philippines - ReFacto - Reports