Suffering from cancer during childhood becomes a sentence to drop out of school in Mexico.
Suffering from cancer during childhood becomes a sentence for school dropout in Mexico when oncological treatments that reduce the patient’s productivity are combined with the lack of teacher training, because in the attempt to continue with their academic training, students are vulnerable to discrimination and bullying for causes associated with the disease.
In the voice of Enrique Ventura Marcial , director of diversity orientation and information of the National Council to Prevent Discrimination (Conapred), cancer patients are denied access to education on the grounds that they do not have the staff or the specialized teachers to care for a person with unique characteristics, since the ravages of chemotherapy result in disabilities that prevent them from learning at the same pace as their peers.
“A diagnosis of cancer and its treatments can have repercussions on attention, concentration, and the level of energy that a child has to carry out school activities. These effects can already be permanent, especially when there is a diagnosis before the age of 5 ”, she said in an interview with MILENIO, Ma. Fernanda Buqueta Mendoza, director of the Center for Psychosocial Studies Applied to Health (Cenepas).
“Already when they are in a school cycle and these decreases in capacities are presenting, well, girls, boys and adolescents are condemned to drop out of school,” said Ventura Marcial.
However, the efforts of teachers to make their work plans more flexible and regularize students with a lag attributable to the disease are not enough to guarantee the right to go to school, because given the ignorance of cancer and its treatments, teachers classmates become cruel enough to force the student to leave the school year or campus.
“For them it is a classmate who left and when they return a year later they are bald, or they are skinnier, fatter, they look different and sometimes this can be used by their classmates to be a reason for ridicule, from very young children, who sometimes the best return to a very childish mockery that is sometimes easier to bear, but we have reached extreme cases of adolescents who are even persecuted in their neighborhood”, adds Diego Parada Herrera, Director of Fundación Vuela.
Carlos was diagnosed with Leukemia at the age of 16, during the last grade of secondary school, and despite his delicate state of health, he continued in person until his immune system allowed it, but he remembers that during that time he was the target of criticism due to his physical appearance.
“My family began to notice that they stared at me a lot, I had to leave school with a hat and a long-sleeved shirt so that the catheter would not be seen (…) I hardly like that they stare at me, the true, and once in a while they have laughed at me”, he told in an interview with MILENIO.
In the hospital where Carlos is treated, there is a mural full of golden ribbons, hallmarks of the fight against childhood cancer, each one accompanied by the reflection of a patient, among which Victoria stands out : “It bothers me that they do bullying at school and they don’t understand that I have to fight the disease, I also have to fight at school out of respect”. At just 11 years old, Victoria’s cancer has returned twice.
In 2019, the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi) registered 40,679 hospital discharges of children and adolescents diagnosed with cancer, which indicates that despite being a high morbidity rate, the chances of having a cancer are low. partner with this disease in the classroom and therefore teachers have to be trained on the fly in how to treat their students.
“At first, it is very nerve-wracking not knowing how to act, as teachers we grow fond of our little ones and this situation also hurts us,” says Jacqueline, a preschool teacher.
“The children wanted to ask and how do I explain? What am I going to tell them? How can I support?” Fabiola Pérez narrates.
“Yes, there is a lack of information to be able to treat the student, to be able to treat a group”, adds Mónica.
Carlos finished his high school in the regularization program implemented at the hospital, but it does not reach all educational levels, so he is studying his baccalaureate through the SEP Prepa Online program, and although he would like to return to the classroom, is not willing to suffer attacks from third parties.
“Because of a disease and even that seems silly to me because it is a disease… if they put themselves in that person’s shoes and saw what a child with cancer has to suffer, I say they would not do it and I think they would even regret it because the truth is very difficult to have cancer”.
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