Fundraisers vow to help save girl
Updated on 28 March 2008
Fundraisers have vowed to "scour the world" for potentially life-saving treatment for a six-year-old girl with a massive tumour entangled around her spine.
Relatives of Jessica Magnus, who has a rare condition affecting fewer than five children in a million, launched an appeal hoping to raise hundreds of thousands of pounds to enable her to start treatment in the US.
But Jessica's mother Stana Magnusova, from Islington, north London, is also considering forms of therapy currently only available in China, Singapore or the Bahamas to tackle her daughter's ganglioneuroblastoma.
She has joined forces with cancer charity Bobby's Fund to raise the cash, believing treatment unavailable in the UK could be the only way to save her.
The charity has recommended treatment at the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre in New York, which needs an initial deposit of £175,000, according to appeal co-ordinator Ian Weir. Treatment costs could potentially rise to several hundred thousand pounds.
Ganglioneuroblastoma is an intermediate type of tumour - one that can potentially have both malignant and benign parts.
Following surgery at London's Great Ormond Street Hospital, removing around a quarter of the tumour, as well as chemotherapy, doctors were able to arrest its development. But while specialists in the UK are now advising a "wait and see" approach, family and friends fear it could be too late to act if the tumour begins to grow again.
Options the fund is considering include gene injection therapy developed in China or antineoplastons - a peptide-based treatment still undergoing clinical trials in the US.
"We are scouring the world for options," Mr Weir said.
He added that Jessica's mother, originally from the Czech Republic, wanted the "best treatment in the world" for her daughter.
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