City of Smile Boston Friends Organize an Evening to Benefit Children with Cancer in Armenia

Obtaining medications can be difficult. They have primarily been supplied as donations by charitable foundations, and up until getting them has been one of the clinic’s primary goals. Last month the Armenian Ministry of Health announced that it will procure essential ones on the World Health Organization list starting this year. However, Tamamyan said, there are many other drugs not on this list which are expensive and used by patients in clinical trials which do not exist in Armenia. It will take many steps to bring clinical trials to Armenia.

Brain drain of the clinic’s staff is a challenge. There are ten doctors and at present five fellows with three-year terms. Tamamyan said that low salaries (on average $300-400 monthly at present depending on the number of night shifts) and other challenges lead many doctors and nurses to leave Armenia. However, after the Velvet Revolution, some people returned, and there is hope this will continue. The goal is to be able to give a normal salary for everyone.

Aside from the aforementioned challenges, the major goal of the clinic is to be able to turn it into such a comprehensive pediatric center that not only will Armenian patients choose not to go abroad for treatment but also patients from neighboring countries will come to get care there. There are a few sporadic instances of this even now. For example, there is a patient from Iran receiving treatment at present. As with Armenian patients, his treatment is free. Tamamyan said, “Cancer does not recognize religion, race, or nationality, so we will treat any child who comes to our clinic as much as we can.”

The size of the clinic at present is not large. It can treat 26 children at any one time, and there are also a lot of adult patients. Half of the children are from the provinces outside of Yerevan. There are also some ten to twenty other children who come and go for maintenance therapy.

Additional outside resources are necessary to sustain the current number of doctors and nurses. However, at present, there are efforts underway to merge the pediatric cancer clinic with the hematology center. This along with additional outside help would allow increasing the number of doctors, nurses and psychologists, hire new specialists like nutritionists and set up a palliative care unit.

In order to help raise funds for this work, the City of Smile Foundation (www.cityofsmile.org) was established in 2014 by Drs. Gevorg Tamamyan and Lilit Sargsyan.

Boston Armenians Become Aware, Take Action

Meanwhile, the Boston-Armenian community’s connection with Muratsan happened in various ways. When Tamamyan was visiting Boston for a Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center training program at the end of 2015, he stayed at Holy Trinity Armenian Church’s parish house in Cambridge. When the church organized a trip to Armenia in 2016, a group of parishioners, including Cynthia Kazanjian, her husband Richard and her 10-year-old grandson Vaughn Krikorian, visited Muratsan along with Fr. Vasken Kouzouian and his wife. (See https://mirrorspectator.com/2017/11/24/muratsan-oncology-clinic-doctors-visit-boston-area/ and https://mirrorspectator.com/2017/09/14/local-group-raises-funds-childrens-cancer-clinic-armenia/)

The effect of seeing the children stricken with cancer was profound and led young Vaughn to ask what could be done to improve their situation.

Upon returning, Cynthia, who had already seen the toll taken by cancer among her own family members, together with others was able to make an arrangement with Dana Farber Global Health Initiatives to ensure that 90 percent of funds raised through the annual Jimmy Fund Walk would be sent to Muratsan Chemotherapy Clinic in Armenia. She went back several more times to Armenia to try to help. Meanwhile, the Jimmy Fund walkers and some auxiliary events raised money in 2016 and 2017. Even Kazanjian’s grandsons helped in this.

Zareh Zurabyan was inspired by Kazanjian’s work to organize with friends a brandy-tasting fundraiser in December 2016 with the support of the Knights of Vartan at the Armenian American Social Club (Papken Suni Agoump) in Watertown.

Kazanjian tirelessly spread awareness of the situation of Armenian children with cancer. When Fr. Mampre Kouzouian visited Armenia in 2017, Kazanjian asked him to visit the clinic. He was so moved by what he saw that he decided to donate half of whatever gifts people would give him at the May 2018 60^th anniversary celebration of his ordination to the City of Smile Foundation via Catholicos Karekin II in Echmiadzin.

Further efforts of Kazanjian and others in the Boston area led to another substantial sum being raised and sent to City of Smile for Muratsan by means of the Armenian Missionary Association of America, which did not charge anything for this transmittal service. The AMAA first investigated the project and accepted it as legitimate and worthwhile.

The total raised by all these efforts in the Boston area and sent to Muratsan over three years is approximately $175,000.

Another important component fell into place with New Paths-Bridging Armenian Women, an online networking group, co-founded by Armine Hovhannissian and Rosalyn Minassian. In the summer of 2017 Kazanjian asked Hovhannissian, going to Armenia on summer vacation, to take some scarfs for some young women in the clinic who had lost their hair. Hovhannissian said, “I came back with my heart broken.” Then when Tamamyan and oncologist Liana Safaryan from Muratsan came to Boston for a Dana Farber program that fall, Kazanjian asked Hovhannissian to host Tamamyan, and this cemented the connection.

When planning their activities for the year, New Paths wanted to do outreach for charity work and they thought immediately of Muratsan. The group contacted Kazanjian, and their discussions were the first step toward the broader community effort which began at the end of 2018.

The final piece of the story came together during the summer of 2018, when Kazanjian was invited to attend an event honoring Anna Hakobyan, who had become honorary chair of the City of Smile Foundation. Hakobyan is spouse of Nikol Pashinyan, leader of the Velvet Revolution and now prime minister of Armenia. Unbeknownst to Kazanjian, she herself was also honored for her support, and the encounter with Hakobyan led to another private meeting to have coffee. Kazanjian invited Hakobyan to Boston for a fundraiser, and Hakobyan accepted. Hovhannissian then met with the executive director of the foundation, Ester Demirtshyan, while in Armenia in summer of 2018, to kick off the planning.

Energized and excited, Kazanjian and Hovhannissian realized that it was necessary to go beyond New Paths, so they reached out to as many Armenian organizations and active members of the community as they could in Boston for their involvement. community noted for pulling together for pan-Armenian causes. They created the City of Smile Charitable Foundation Boston Friends group at the end of 2018 to carry out fundraising and support the mission of Muratsan. This was to become the beginning of a nonprofit chapter of the City of Smile here in the United States. The two women are now also co-chairs of the forthcoming evening program, and their efforts continue to bring people of all backgrounds together in support of a good humanitarian cause. Even people as far away as in Los Angeles have been donating their services.

Kazanjian, encouraging the public to participate as much as possible, said, “I see this as a vehicle to help children with cancer in Armenia. They deserve to have a life. They are young, innocent children who have no choice. They have been diagnosed with cancer and this is devastating not only to their lives but the whole family. It hits you so hard, and more so when you do not have the resources. It is overwhelming to think about how much it costs to help a child in this situation, and they do not have it.”

Hovhannissian added her appeal to the public, declaring: “When I visited the clinic, I knew what to expect as someone born and raised in Armenia, but living in the US for over 20 years and having my own children in and out of hospitals gave me a whole new perspective. It made me realize that the kids in Armenia are no less than the ones here and they absolutely deserve the same highest quality of care. Though this is a major undertaking, we are moved to do this from the depths of our hearts, as we know this is an important cause and we want to do all we can to help these innocent children’s lives. We are beyond grateful to all those organizations and individuals who are in support of this wonderful effort and looking forward to spend a beautiful evening together with the Boston Armenian community!”

For advance ticket purchases for the April 5 evening, contact Postaljian@hotmail.com/ 617 921-8962 or Manuk0102@gmail.com / 781 883-4470 by March 22.