Ryan Bachoo
Lead Editor - Newsgathering
ryan.bachoo@cnc3.co.tt
In the desolate environment of cancer care, Dr Jacqueline Pereira-Sabga is a beacon of light to those in the middle of their greatest battle in life.
A general practitioner for almost three decades, Dr Pereira-Sabga has married her passion for cancer care with practicality. It is no longer about just treating cancer patients for her, it is now about raising their standard of living and restoring the dignity that is lost with the disease.
She runs in many 5k events to raise charity for cancer care. In 2017, she and her friend Cherise Stauble raced from London to Paris to raise money for both the T&T Cancer Society and the Just Because Foundation.
“I think it was just an evolution that occurred,” she said in an interview with the Sunday Guardian’s WE Magazine.
Now, Dr Pereira-Sabga is revolutionising how she cares for cancer patients. Along with Stauble, Tenille Maingot, Christine Sabga, and Helena Sabga, she established Promise House TT last June. “We started to identify what we thought was a need. There is a home away from home that is run by Just Because Foundation and when we looked at it, we thought we could take that idea and put into it many more resources that we thought were necessary for these children as they stayed,” she told us.
The facility is paediatric oncology and is available for free to anybody in need. It has six beds that house children with cancer or chronic disease, children who are well enough to not be in the hospital but may not be able to be at home in their present condition. Promise House TT offers the children play therapy, art therapy and a holistic addressing of each child.
“How do you say the numbers are not big, but the need is great?” Dr Sabga responded when asked about the number of children in T&T who need cancer care.
She recalled that pre-pandemic, T&T’s oncology department would care for many Caribbean children with cancer while also managing local kids. Post-pandemic, Dr Pereira-Sabga said, the Caribbean numbers have dwindled, but local children who suffer from cancer still require a lot of attention.
She added, “When you have a sick child, it is very hard for a family. You may have one sick child and two normal and healthy children, how do you make that juggle and focus on the child who is sick? In any chronic disease, it is expensive and you might have sick children [and] well children in the same household and so there is always need like that.”
In mid-June 2013, Dr Pereira-Sabga sat down with this newspaper as she assumed the leadership of the T&T Cancer Society. At the time, she was a general practitioner, chairman and medical director of Vitas House Hospice when she replaced Dr George Laquis, who had been at the helm of the Cancer Society for over 40 years.
Humbled by Woman of the Year award
Her consistent service down the years was recognised by the InterClub of T&T on March 10, when she was named Woman of the Year. “Her forthright call to provide humane palliative care to people in their last days is a call to our conscience, and in particular to those who hold the power to relieve the suffering of the terminally ill,” the organisation said of Dr Pereira-Sabga. The award humbled her.
“Promise House TT is way bigger than what I dreamt of. I don’t think the team envisioned the spectacular structure that came to fruition,” she said. Then, an army of volunteers descended on Santa Cruz one weekend to help power wash, paint and clean the building. “People I knew, people I didn’t know, and people you would least expect to show up on a weekend,” she added with a smile.
But, as those closest to Dr Pereira-Sabga have come to know when one of her dreams comes true, she dreams up another. She told us what the Promise House TT team is working on next, “On that property, there are three buildings. The second building will be a nurses’ rest area and an adult cancer hospice, which will also be free to anybody who needs it.” It has already been completed and will be commissioned soon. But it doesn’t stop there.
The final phase of the project, she said, is to renovate the home for the age which already exists. “We want to create a city for them,” she said. When fully completed, Promise House TT will encapsulate children with cancer, adults with cancer and a home for the age. “We want to create an ecosystem,” Dr Pereira-Sabga explained.
However, for this woman, who is infatuated with giving, her hands will forever remain outstretched. While attending an Angostura Youth Awards, she would meet children who came from some of the most adverse areas of the country. “I asked the organisers if I could just talk to the kids by myself. We started to talk about what would help them, and they said homework centres,” she said.
At that moment, another dream was born. This is how she would be able to help children who live in at-risk communities and want to find a better life for themselves. She explained to us more about the idea, “Homework centres for them are safe spaces, where, instead of being on the block or on the street, where you might get yourself in a little trouble, a homework centre is somewhere they would come, they’d be accountable so we can organise to have volunteers to help them get their homework done, feed them and then send them home.”
That, Dr Pereira-Sabga said, can nullify some of the neighbourhood liming that may not be in their best interest. The children she spoke to at Angostura’s Youth Awards helped her identify four areas that they think will be important to start such a project.
Life has never really slowed down for Dr Pereira-Sabga but she is passionate about helping people. When asked about what motivates and drives her to keep tirelessly pursuing dream after dream, she smiled and pointed to her husband who was quietly sitting in the corner of the room.
She’s been married to Howard Sabga for 30 years and she said, “Howard is an engineered humanitarian, and I don’t know anybody else who sacrifices himself every single day like my husband.”
She also has a special place for her Promise House team. “They are the most endeared, driven, devoted and powerful women who stand right next to me and when InterClub gave me this beautiful award, I felt they didn’t just recognise me, it was a recognition of my team as well. There are no words to describe how hard these women work and it is on the shoulders of giants that I stand, and they are the giants,” she said.
Many dream of a better life for themselves, but Dr Jacqueline Pereira-Sabga dreams of a better life for those decimated by a disease with no known cure, and her will is to save young people from the cancer of criminality spreading across the nation’s communities. She will never stop dreaming.
Q&A with Dr Pereira-Sabga
With cancer treatment being a critical part of this country’s health system, Dr Pereira-Sabga also answered some one-on-one questions with the Sunday Guardian’s WE Magazine on how the global and domestic systems can improve.
Q: When you look at how far we’ve come with cancer treatment in this country, how far have we come?
A: I think strides made worldwide in cancer treatment have been what I would say moderate. I think what we have started to realise in cancer treatment is that we have this plethora of drugs, but we also have to address a lot of the needs of patients; psychological needs and nutritional needs are also things that are very important to be more successful in our treatment of cancer patients.
How far do we have to go?
You know, people might say, do we have all the resources? Do we have all the drugs? We might not have all the drugs, but I think the Government has really made an effort to supply these medications. And at places like National Radiotherapy Centre, of course, they are free to the public. And that, to me, is a service that we can never speak about enough. And the staff and doctors that exist there. It’s a hard job. And, you know, I think that it’s wonderful that it exists. So what kind of strides do we need to make? I think, as a world, we have never-ending strides to make. That’s the honest truth.
Do you think we will ever find a cure for cancer?
So, the eternal optimist in me will tell you, I hope that one day, yes. The realist might tell you that I don’t foresee that certainly in our lifetime we will see a cure for cancer. But I’m hoping that in our lifetime–I hope we have a lot more decades to live–I’m hoping that in our lifetime, we will definitely see some of the positive strides that we’ve been talking about being made in the care of cancer patients, at paediatric and adult level.
Over the last few decades, particularly with the rise of fast food in the mass way that the world now consumes it, are processed foods contributing in a way to a rise in cancer like never seen before?
I would have to tell you that, off the bat, what we would see is that, of course, choosing fast food or processed foods over fresh foods. Let’s be honest, and on a Caribbean island, the availability of fresh foods is right there. You might want to have luxury foods, and that might be harder for you to find, but basic provisions, proteins and stuff, they’re right there for us, they’re readily accessible. And I would say that what I see in my practice is certainly the access and the easy availability of fast foods have steered patients towards it because it might be economically friendly, and it might be easily accessible, versus having to go and seek and cook your own food. But, I do believe it results in certainly chronic disease. I believe it results in the rise of hypertension, diabetes, obesity, all of those things.
In the case of Aneesa Doon, who required cancer medication from India, what would you say to those families that are nursing cancer patients, especially in rural communities?
One of the drug companies reached out to me recently and said, ‘How can we help, and how can drug companies help?’ Well, I understand that a drug company is a business. But I also understand that looking at novel and odd drugs, bringing them in and having them here might not necessarily be the right thing.
But, if we can identify–and I actually told them–we need to get together, maybe myself, Dr Capildeo and Dr Dindial, all the players that help patients, paediatric and adult in this country, as doctors and get them together. And let’s compile a list of the drugs that we feel are important. And then those drug companies should make it easier.
So, if I might need a drug, whatever the drug is, that’s not readily available in this country, but the need has come up. If drug companies are really honest and genuine and want to help this plight and these patients, they need to form the tracks. So form the tracks so that if a doctor says I need ‘Drug A’ that’s not available here in Trinidad in the mass, we can source that and get it immediately so that those pathways are existent.
Right now, all the drug companies I feel do is they want to find out what’s financially lucrative and bring it in, you know, so that that’s not always the right thing. And I feel that that’s important. And drug companies, I think, could be taxed a little bit when I say, bring them to the forefront and say, ‘Listen, these are the drugs that we want to come in, allow Government to allow that accessibility whatever paperwork needs to be done.’ So not necessarily that we bring the drug, but if I need that drug, I can get it here in a day or two.
Do we also need to look at government regulation?
If we can sort out that, with Government and with drug companies and the doctors. Let’s get together. We appreciate all the drugs that Government is bringing in. We appreciate their value, they’re useful and their quantities, but there are some novel drugs that don’t need to be purchased and have to sit down here and then expire or not be used.
But, let’s forge those pathways. Let’s get the paperwork done. Let’s make sure that the regulations on those particular drugs are not as tedious so that if we need a drug, we say ‘Right, drug company X, this is your drug. And we need to source this amount of drug for this patient, bring it in.’
And so that that accessibility, I think it’s, I mean ... I’m not a business person by nature ... But to me, that seems much more financially feasible than bringing in, say, 30 vials of a drug, when only two might be used. So have the accessibility there so that we afford the pathways to make it happen if we need, and that, to answer your question on this young girl, if those pathways were forged, she would have been one of the rules or one of the patients that had a need.
But now we have, if we had that put in place where the drug company, where Government, the regulations are sorted out, we then tap into that pathway and say, ‘Right, so this young girl needed Drug X, we can get that.’ Instead of having 30, or 50, or 100 of drug X vials here, we’re not going to use them.
