Kentucky’s leading cancer researchers and parents of children with the disease say that increased funding in pediatric cancer research would better help them understand and treat it.
Jamie Bloyd is a mother of a child diagnosed with Burkitt’s Lymphoma. She told lawmakers on the Joint Committee for Health and Welfare Wednesday that the state should commit funds to studying the disease in children like her son Paxton.
“Ten million dollars in our budget goes to dental care for inmates, but zero dollars go to pediatric cancer research in Kentucky. And I just think that that’s sickening. I think that our kids deserve better than our inmates do.”
Bloyd says $10 million in state funding “would be a good starting place.”
According to the University of Kentucky’s Pediatric Research Institute, about 150 Kentucky children are diagnosed with cancer each year.