Dear members of SCAN,

Greetings of peace, joy, and health to all of you. It’s a great joy to see how our society formed our foundation in our core mission of cancer advocacy and awareness, with the vision to be the Voice for Cancer Patients in our community in Sarawak through the last four and a half years.
Despite the COVID-19 pandemic which has significantly impacted our daily lives the last two years, I am incredibly grateful for many members who have shown great support and contribution to our organized activities. Even as we had to switch from face-to-face meetings to virtual platforms for our monthly survivor sharing session, regular awareness talks/webinars, we were seeing support from our members participating and inviting friends to join us.

I am thankful for the project team who took the time to brainstorm and plan out a successful SPOKE workshop with 30 NGOs/groups attending in Aug 2021, as well as many who contributed to our Cancer Guidebook translation into BM and Chinese in 2020 and the upcoming Iban version. I’d also like to express my gratitude to those who have volunteered to be peer counselors to support our Cancer Helpline and grabbed hold of all opportunities of learning through virtual workshops and training provided by Rare Cancers Australia, Galen Centre, and Cancer Research Malaysia, to name a few.

In the Year 2022, we shall focus on accelerating our Advocacy initiatives particularly on the 3 Wish List that we advocated (Cancer Hospital, Financial Aid for B40 patients, and Affordable cancer treatment). We need to make our presence felt to gain stronger support towards our Advocacy work from the public, for the good of our cancer community. In conjunction with the new World Cancer Day theme i.e. “Close the Care Gap’, we wish the theme song with help from Alena Murang and team will be spread globally; and our Hair Donation Fundraiser Event will reach out to more of the public to know our effort in strengthening our Peer Counseling and Cancer Support. In addition, we’re embarking on a data research/survey project to assess Information Needs and Supportive Care Needs among patients in SGH this year.

I trust that as we continue to work as a team focusing on various key projects, activities, and initiatives, we will be getting to what we planned to achieve, just like what we have witnessed in the past years. We as a patient organization have the potential and capacity as long as we continue to learn and collaborate with all relevant groups to pursue our vision. We will and we can get closer to the day to CLOSE THE CARE GAP!

Thank you, everyone. May this New Year bring new hope and renewed inspiration to all of us.

Regards,

Sew Boon Lui
President
SCAN