10 Year Old With Leukaemia Needs Your Help

Cleon Marage Jr.

Imagine your young child – happy, healthy, smiling…getting ready for a new year of school. You sit and dream about what he will be when he grows up. And then suddenly, overnight, without warning, he’s diagnosed with a deadly disease and life as you know it falls apart. That’s what happened to Clovis Matura in April, when her ten year old son Cleon was diagnosed with Acute Myloid Leukaemia. He can’t be treated in Belize, and the young mother is desperately seeking help to save his life. Today she came by our studios because chemotherapy is Cleon’s only chance and quite simply, she cannot afford it.

Clovis Matura, Mother of Cleon Marage Jr.

“Before the sickness he was happy, fun, liked to smile. He was smart in school, ambitious, outgoing, had a lot of friends and family. Every loved him. He was friendly.”

Reporter

Clovis Matura

“How has the sickness affected him now?”

Clovis Matura

“Now he’s changed completely. He’s always sick, constant diarrhoea, goes to the bathroom ten or twelve times a day, vomiting, fever, tiredness. He’s always in pain all over his body. The only thing he wants to do is sleep. He doesn’t want to eat, he doesn’t want to play. He doesn’t want to do anything.”

Reporter

“I understand also that you have been to Merida seeking treatment for him. What are the doctors there saying? What are his chances?”

Clovis Matura

“The doctor in Merida says he has a forty percent chance. He also needs bone marrow which they are unable to do there. He has to go to the United States. The chemotherapy is every month for eighteen months and if he were to go to America his chances would be much greater and the chemotherapy costs four thousand Belize every month. Aside from that we need finances for somewhere to stay, to buy additional medicines which he needs that the hospital doesn’t have…other stuff like diapers, wipes, food that he needs, stuff like that.”

Reporter

“How are you all managing right now?”

Clovis Matura

“We noh deh manage. The first time we gawn we went ill prepared. We received some finances from his doctor at the Karl Heusner and dat da how we mi do it. And we recently came back and now we have to go back again Sunday. We came back yesterday evening and we have to go back Sunday. I want to ask anybody who can help with any financial donations…any kind of assistance, even if we can get assistance to take him abroad, that would be much greater but anything they can help with.”

If you’d like to assist ten year old Cleon you can call his mother at 665-0190 or deposit directly to Holy Redeemer Credit Union Savings Account 52770 in the name of Cleon Marage Junior.