After the success of the text campaign to help baby Pia obtain the world's most expensive medicine, another campaign has been launched in Belgium to raise money for baby Mathis' cancer immunotherapy.
Mathis Geens (1.5 years old) suffers from neuroblastoma in the adrenal gland, for which treatment costs up to €182,000. "The Children's Cancer Support Fund has already contributed €15.000, and our volunteers have raised over €6,000. The family also did a fundraiser on Facebook, which yielded €25,000," said Patrick Hubeau, the chairman of the Children's Cancer Support Fund, to Het Nieuwsblad.
"The campaign started on Saturday night," said Hubeau. "On Sunday, there was a huge response already. At a cost of €2 per text message, we have raised 120,000 euro. Telecom companies like Telenet, Proximus and Orange normally charge €0.50 per text, but they dropped that for the campaign for baby Pia because it was for a good cause. We hope they will treat this case in the same way," he added.
Even though the system was down for most of Monday because of an electricity failure, over 60,000 text messages to help baby Mathis have been sent already. People who wanted to send a text message on Monday received an error message.
“The problem lies with the operator, a company that technically runs the texting campaign. They have tried to solve the problem all day, but they have not succeeded. Our intention is to restart the campaign when everything is in working order again. If money were to be left at the end of the campaign, it would go to families in the same situation," said Hubeau.
Maïthé Chini
The Brussels Times
