Twelve-year-old Bran­don Panan, who has been di­ag­nosed with hav­ing a large fa­cial tu­mour, is now at Jack­son Memo­r­i­al Hos­pi­tal, Holtz Chil­dren's Hos­pi­tal in Mi­a­mi re­ceiv­ing med­ical at­ten­tion. Hope of a Mir­a­cle said in a state­ment that Bran­don was at the hos­pi­tal to be eval­u­at­ed with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of hav­ing the fa­cial tu­mour re­duced so that he could have as much of a nor­mal life as pos­si­ble.

The foun­da­tion said it was af­ter over­com­ing many ob­sta­cles it was able to send Bran­don for treat­ment by one of the best sur­geons, Dr Je­sus Gomez. In 2010, the foun­da­tion first opt­ed to send Bran­don to the Na­tion­al Foun­da­tion for Fa­cial Re­con­struc­tion in New York, and The Chil­dren's Health Care of At­lanta. It was there doc­tors de­ter­mined that the tu­mour had ex­pand­ed over time and in­vad­ed some mus­cles, ten­dons and nerves, mak­ing any pro­ce­dure very risky.

The foun­da­tion said it still need­ed pub­lic sup­port to help Bran­don and oth­er sick chil­dren. The or­gan­i­sa­tion said con­tri­bu­tions can me made to Re­pub­lic Bank sav­ings ac­count num­ber 110 215 385 331 or RBC ac­count num­ber 93 11 033 923. Any­one wish­ing more in­for­ma­tion can con­tact the of­fice at 637-6852. You can al­so fol­low the or­gan­i­sa­tion's ac­tiv­i­ties on Face­book through its Hope of a Mir­a­cle Foun­da­tion page.