Alice Eduardo, president and CEO of Sta. Elena Construction Corporation is branded as the “Woman of Steel” in the business industry with the perseverance and competitiveness as hard as steel but is also known as a philanthropist that definitely has a soft heart for the underprivileged family especially for the little angels already battling for cancer.

Together with Miss World Philippines national director Cory Quirino, Alice Eduardo initiated the ground breaking event of the rise of the Hematology-Oncology Isolation Ward which she also donated to the Philippine General Hospital to relief the indigent families an access to quality treatment facilities. “I saw with my own eyes and held with my own hand the challenge to provide proper health care to young cancer patients when I visited at PGH the sick child of one of my own employees. Charity cannot wait” says Alice Eduardo.

Photo from Philstar

Children with cancer comprise the fastest-growing sector of hospital patients, with their numbers rising by an alarming 30 percent every year.

With this newly raised pediatric cancer ward, will be an aid to the families who can’t afford expensive treatments for children with cancer, providing them a separate ward especially that they are more susceptible to communicable diseases.

The donation of the Hematology-Oncology Isolation Ward to the Department of Pediatrics of PGH is part of Sta. Elena Construction corporate social responsibility program. The stand-alone pediatric cancer ward will have a 14-bed facility for children from poor families stricken with leukemia and other killer diseases and will also have in-patient chemotherapy facilities as well as blood transfusion and bone marrow extraction equipment and supplies.

Leukemia is known to affect around 40 to 60 percent of cancers among children. The disease accounts for more deaths among children than those caused by dengue shock syndrome, sepsis and prematurity combined, according to experts. With its extremely expensive treatments, most family struggles to afford such treatment.

The survival rate is barely two in 10 children because of the high cost of diagnosis and treatment that childhood cancer entail. Between 50 to 60 percent of these children, however, could be saved with relatively simple and inexpensive drugs and procedures.

According to Alice Eduardo, “Sta. Elena Construction is giving back to the community, through its CSR program, what it has achieved in sustained growth from partnership with the business sector in various infrastructure, property development and energy projects over the years.”

“We are very glad to help PGH in this humanitarian endeavor, especially since we are going to help children from disadvantaged families unable to afford cancer detection and treatment to get a second chance and recover from life-threatening diseases,” she added.