(A FIVE-bed hospital.)

Hospital gets help for kids with cancer

By Cheryl Clark
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

July 19, 2008

TIJUANA – With help from Rady Children's Hospital San Diego, Mexican children with cancer now can be treated in a Tijuana hospital equipped and qualified to provide state-of-the-art care – with financial blessing from the Mexican federal government.

The new five-bed unit, which opened yesterday in the General Hospital in Tijuana, is the only publicly funded cancer facility for children in Tijuana. It is expected to admit at least 100 new cancer patients and provide about 400 with radiation, chemotherapy and other medical treatments for leukemia and solid tumors each year.

The new unit also is expected to reduce infections – a common occurrence in fragile cancer patients – because it is sequestered from other areas of the hospital to keep germs such as tuberculosis from being transmitted from other patients, said Dr. William Roberts, Rady's director of hematology/oncology.

“With the opening of this unit, we expect more kids will survive childhood cancer,â€