Geneva, December 2009: HRH Princess Ghida Talal, the Chairperson of the Board of Trustees of the King Hussein Cancer Foundation (KHCF) and HRH Princess Dina Mired, Director General of KHCF attended a grant agreement signing ceremony at the OPEC Fund (Fund) headquarters in Vienna, Austria on November 30th, 2009.
This grant agreement of $600,000, the second grant by the Fund to KHCF, was awarded to the Foundation to help sustain its mission to provide state-of-the-art comprehensive cancer care to an increasing number of patients from Jordan and the Middle East. This grant will be used to upgrade the Radiology Department of the King Hussein Cancer Center, the Foundation’s medical arm, by installing a new, state-of-the-art Interventional Radiology Suite.
Interventional Radiology is a sub-specialty of radiology in which minimally invasive procedures are performed using image guidance. Some of these procedures are done for purely diagnostic purposes while some are done for treatment purposes. What is especially helpful is that these images provide road maps which allow the interventional radiologists to guide needles or catheters through the body to target precise areas of interest.
During the signing ceremony, Princess Ghida thanked OFID for their support saying “the grant will help in providing critical diagnostic tools for the Radiology Department that will increase the efficiency and resolution of our imaging while decreasing the processing time. Most importantly, it will provide road maps which allow precise parts of the body to be targeted”.
Citing major medical achievements and successes by the King Hussein Cancer Center, Princess Ghida spoke about what she called “the Jewel” of the Center; the Bone Marrow Transplant Program. She said that around 100 bone marrow transplants are conducted annually at the Center adding that “the Center’s BMT Program is one of the largest and most successful programs in the Middle East, with cure rates compatible with international standards”. Princess Ghida also said that the BMT Program recently began performing transplants utilizing cord blood, making it the only program in Jordan and one of two in the region which offers such highly-specialized transplants.
Princess Ghida also spoke of the success of the Jordan Breast Cancer Program (JBCP); saying that KHCF and KHCC have been entrusted with the leadership of the Program; adding “that since it was launched three years ago, the JBCP, the number of women presenting themselves at stages 3 and 4 of breast cancer has almost halved from 70% to 35%, and for the first time”, and that in Jordan “we have also witnessed the emergence of stage zero, a stage which did not exist in Jordan before”.
The new Interventional Radiology Suite, made possible by OFID grant, will replace the old machine currently at use at the Center and will provide faster processing time, dual x-rays, and high-resolution imaging capabilities. The acquisition of this machine will increase the number of patients who can be seen in the Radiology Department, increase the accuracy of diagnosis, and allow doctors to perform various procedures, such as angiography, biopsies, or chemotherapy with greatly enhanced efficiency. We expect that the Interventional Radiology Suite will be used for around 230 procedures each month