September is International Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. However, for hundreds of families in Israel, childhood cancer is not about awareness – it is a suffocating, daily reality. It is a relentless fight for life: terrifying, exhausting, and above all, lonely.
Each year, more families turn to our organization in desperate need of help. Parents whose children require unique treatment, medication not included in the national health basket, an innovative protocol, or participation in a clinical trial that is hundreds of thousands of shekels beyond their reach. Dozens of such cases every month. Each child represents an entire world, a full life hanging in the balance. Still, the system is not always there for them.
At Larger Than Life, we see families paying nearly NIS 80,000 a month for biological therapies that slow the spread of tumors. Others take out loans of hundreds of thousands of shekels to finance treatments approved in the US but not yet in Israel. And all this while shuttling between hospitals, tests, sleepless nights, and endless tears. This is not fate – it is policy.
When the state retreats, NGOs step in
Israelis believe they have a national health insurance system. In reality, the picture is often very different. At the most critical, fragile moments, families are stunned to discover that the treatment that could save their child’s life is unavailable – not through the public health system and sometimes not even through their private insurance, if they have one. Suddenly, they face the impossible task of raising huge sums of money overnight.
This creates an absurd reality: Instead of a system that adapts and responds flexibly to medical progress, we leave the fight – and the fundraising – to third-sector organizations. At Larger Than Life, we battle alongside families for children’s lives – with donations, campaigns, and hope. Yet, this is not the way.
The very fact that, ahead of a new fiscal year, we must fight to prevent cuts to the national health basket is itself a grim signal for public health in Israel. Funding for life-saving treatments must never be tied to political horse-trading or coalition budgets.
A proper health system should naturally expand its coverage each year in line with scientific and technological progress, without forcing patient organizations into constant battles for the basics of survival.
Behind every child with cancer stands an entire family fighting not only the disease but often the system itself. In today’s Israel, that fight has only grown harder – an unspoken side effect of the war and its economic toll. Families are collapsing under the weight: emotionally, physically, and financially.
Time to take responsibility
We must ask ourselves: Where is Israel’s public health system headed? Will saving lives here depend on a family’s bank account? In Israel of 2025, will children die not because medicine cannot help them but because their parents could not afford the best treatment available?
During this awareness month, I call on decision-makers, government ministries, and the health basket committee: The economic consequences of war cannot be borne on the backs of patients in general, and certainly not on children fighting cancer.
It is said that “it takes a village to raise a child.” It also takes a village to save one. And the leaders of that village must make the right decisions for the sake of the next generation.
The writer is CEO of Larger Than Life, Israel’s leading organization supporting children with cancer and their families.