Cancer: “Seven children are diagnosed every day”, warns the president of the association Imagine for Margo

Every day, a personality invites themselves into the world of Élodie Suigo. Tuesday, September 10, 2024: the founding president of the association Imagine for Margo – Children without Cancer, Patricia Blanc. On September 29, the solidarity race Enfants sans Cancer will take place at the Domaine national de Saint-Cloud.

Since 2011, Patricia Blanc has been the founding president of the association Imagine for Margo – Children without Cancer, an essential association that has already recovered and allocated 20 million euros to research into childhood and adolescent cancers with 51 funded research programs. It was Margaux, her daughter, who died at the age of 13 following a brain tumor, who pushed her to continue this fight, to do everything she could to perhaps save other children and therefore other families. On September 29, the Children without Cancer Solidarity Race will take place at the Domaine national de Saint-Cloud, with a collection that will help finance new innovative projects.

franceinfo: We are not at all aware that children are largely affected by cancer.

Patricia Blanc: 2,500 children are diagnosed with cancer in France each year. Seven children per day and one in five will die. We need to cure more of them. We also need to cure them better because most of the children who are cured will have serious after-effects. We need to make this known and we need to mobilize so that children can recover and have the best possible adult life.

“Childhood cancer is the leading cause of death from illness in children over one year old in France and Europe. It is not a small subject.”

Patricia White

to franceinfo

This association is a way for you to transmit, to pass the torch, to support. Would you have liked to have had this at the time of the discovery of Margaux’s illness and at the time of her death?

In fact, when Margaux fell ill, we were told straight away that we could not cure her. And Margaux, during her illness, had collected funds for research and she left us this message, this message of life: “Go ahead, fight, win!“So, faced with this collection that she had made for research and in addition to this message, we could not do otherwise than mobilize for others and continue her fight, honor her, but also honor all the other children who have unfortunately left or who are currently fighting.

You have an incredible career path. You worked for 26 years in an audit firm, then in international finance for a major bank and you gave it all up in 2013 to devote yourself to this association. Why this choice?

Already, when I returned to my position a few months after Margaux’s death, I no longer really had the same motivation. And then Margaux had raised funds and we said to ourselves: “So, she wanted to help others. We have people around us who can help us.“, she still collected €100,000, that’s not nothing,”There is a network around us that could help us continue the fight“. I made a choice between: I continue in banking or I turn the page towards something new. It was risky, but at the same time I didn’t want to regret it, I didn’t want to look back two years later and say to myself: I should have done it and I didn’t. And so, in order not to regret it, I had to act. I said to myself: I’m going for it!

There are three very important axes for you: financing, improving the well-being of children and above all mobilizing public authorities, French and European authorities. What is the greatest difficulty in these fights?

We need to mobilize and make it known that children have cancer so that we can say: “Something must be done“Because until we know, well we can’t mobilize. And that’s why it’s important that we let people know that Golden September exists and that it’s International Childhood Cancer Month. And then the big difficulties are that there are a hundred different types of cancer in children, so that makes them rare diseases. So there’s little investment from industry and little mobilization from public authorities.

For those of you reading this, there is indeed this race that will take place on September 29th. You have to support this race by participating. How can you take part?

It’s very simple. To participate in the race, you have to register on a site called: Children without cancer and then everything is explained. You register, you set up your collection page and then you send this page to your friends, your colleagues, your family to say: “Look, I am committed to children with cancer, do like me“You talk about the cause and you also raise funds!

You have just published a book dedicated to your daughter Margaux, To the little girl you were published by Et Ma Plume. Is this a way of continuing to address her, of telling her things?

“I had a hard time putting my pain into words, but at the same time, I needed to leave a trace of Margaux’s fight, as well as for her sister.”

Patricia White

to franceinfo

I needed, because I was asked, to show why and how we managed to overcome this tragedy. It is also a message to other families, to say to themselves: “Well, there you go, we can have a terrible tragedy in our life. The death of a child is in our guts, it’s something very strong. How do we find the energy from that to continue moving forward, to live and also to help others?“