Abandonment of treatment, defined as the failure to start or complete curative therapy, remains a major cause of pediatric cancer mortality in low- and mid-income countries. The SIOP PODC Treatment Abandonment Working Group was created in 2010 with the hope of understanding and tackling this problem. The mission of the Treatment Abandonment Working Group is to improve the survival of children with cancer by reducing the number of children with cancer who either do not start or do not complete curative treatment.

Our vision is to improve access to care and improve treatment completion, and narrow the gaps in outcomes of children with cancer in resource-rich and resource-poor settings.

Our specific aims are to increase awareness of abandonment as a problem, and facilitate evidence-building and information-sharing across diverse settings on abandonment-related outcomes, factors, and interventions.  Through these efforts, we hope to understand this phenomenon better and create pathways to minimize its incidence.

We have over 100 multidisciplinary and multilingual members from 35 countries with different experiences concerning treatment abandonment, and welcome others who share our interest to join this Working Group site.

• Objective 1 (Promote reporting): Reporting recommendations
• Objective 2 (Measure and map abandonment): Global provider survey; systematic review
• Objective 3 (Share resources): Cure4Kids curriculum; online Documents Repository
• Objectives 4 & 5 (Assess and share contributors and solutions): Cost of Childhood Cancer project; Patient Navigation and Tracking (PANTRACC) project; Global Taskforce on Hospital Detention Practices; Interventions Analysis; Integrative Medicine collaborative
• Objective 6 (Promote group impact): Creating LinkedIn group

Arora RS, Eden T, Pizer B. The problem of treatment abandonment in children
from developing countries with cancer. Pediatr Blood Cancer. 2007
Dec;49(7):941-6.

Sample Curriculum: https://www.cure4kids.org/ums/home/curriculum/

Abandonment of Treatment Curriculum

Hospital Detention Practices Globally Curriculum (under construction)

Online Repository: https://www.cure4kids.org/ums/home/groups/detail/index.php?groups_id=333