More Than A Cure Foundation holds education day at Jewish General Hospital

The More Than A Cure Foundation (MTAC) held an education day at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal on Wednesday evening.

More Than A Cure provides critical financial assistance and services to help women in need navigate diagnosis and treatment.

The Foundation to date has raised over $250,000 to help support women battling breast cancer. The Education Day was the brainchild of Dr. Debra Heilpern and the MTAC Education Committee.

“Every women should feel empowered, feel a sense of community and should feel at least in part that some of the financial burden has been removed and so that’s really where we stand, filling those gaps,” said Dr. Tamara Gafoor, pediatric physician at the Montreal Children’s Hospital and the founder of the More Than a Cure Foundation.

“People, when they’re aware, when they’re equipped with the information that they need at the time that they need it, can truly advocate for themselves and improve their own outcomes,” said Dr. Ipshita Prakash, breast cancer surgeon at the Jewish General Hospital and Gafoor’s doctors when she faced her battle with breast cancer in 2022.

Education Day provided fellow doctors, patients and loved ones the opportunity to learn about the various facets of breast cancer, beyond the diagnosis.

“The truth is that there’s so much that goes into being treated with breast cancer,” said Dr. Gafoor. “You can be cured of it, but the healing of it encompasses so much more. And so really being aware of all of the different resources that improve the quality of life of the warriors, I think this is so important. I was so fortunate to have access to so much of this in my own personal journey, and it was something that the team and myself really wanted to be able to offer to the community.”

Dr. Gafoor had a personal relationship with many of her doctors when she battled breast cancer; a privilege she is aware that most patients do not have.

“I knew Tammy initially as a colleague, sort of peripherally, but when she was initially diagnosed I was involved in treating her as her surgical oncologist,” said Dr. Stephanie Wong, surgical oncologist at the Jewish General Hospital. “So I remember everything from the initial conversations that we had and taking her through and seeing her through her cancer journey was incredible. She was an incredible inspiration and continues to be an inspiration for a lot of women.”

Dr. Gafoor has made it her mission to give back to women battling breast cancer, through her foundation.

“Like the heart of the treatment of breast cancer is early detection, early detection saves lives,” said Dr. Gafoor. “So it’s the screening programs, it’s making sure that women know what to look for and how to advocate for themselves. And then in terms of when a woman gets diagnosed, it is really a question of being able to fill the gaps that our healthcare system can’t provide everything for.”

Dr. Prakash described Dr. Gafoor as “a force of nature. I cannot find any better terms or words to describe her. She is the most inspiring person I’ve ever met and yes, we played a small role in treating her through her journey, but really she did all of this from the internal energy and motivation that she has. And she has created MTAC from that journey so that she can reach out to women who may not have the privilege that she did.”

When women are battling breast cancer, there are so many external factors they have to consider; for some, going for necessary treatment may come down to choosing whether or not to take a day off work; a luxury many cannot afford.

Dr. Gafoor explained that MTAC provides, “direct financial aid (for women battling breast cancer), which helps to pay things like the women’s rents, their transport to and from their hospital visits, healthy groceries when they’re undergoing their battle. We’ve created a mentorship program where the women get together and this is in collaboration with Allo Mon Coco, where they have free breakfasts once a month, really to help build that sisterhood. We have a legal aid program where we provide free wills and mandates to our women in need.”

“We help the children of our warriors in a partnership with an organization called Export Support to help these children be able to have school supplies when they go to school and to be able to have sports scholarships to go to camps in the summer when their mothers are undergoing treatment,” added Dr. Gafoor.

To learn more about More than a Cure, visit their website.