Accompanying cancer patients in Val-de-Marne, France

The Air Liquide Foundation is supporting the association Accueil-Familles-Cancer in setting up talking groups for cancer patients and their family and friends.

Accueil Famille Cancer Logo In France, in the Val-de-Marne department, the number of new cancer patients is estimated at 5,000 each year. When they return home, the patients’ needs are generally not satisfied. The disease and the aggressive treatments cause physical and psychic traumas, disarray for the families and sometimes even attacks on family, social and professional links, generating isolation and therefore new traumas. A vicious circle that the association Accueil-Familles-Cancer wishes to break.

Its goal: welcoming and accompanying cancer patients at every stage of their disease as well as their loved ones or care-givers to ensure that the disease’s psychic and social dimensions are better taken care of.

To do this, the association Accueil-Familles-Cancer has created in the heart of the city of Saint-Maur, a welcome, listening and exchange space to offer a talking setting for patients to restore the social link that is often damaged by the isolation the disease and its treatments cause.

The Air Liquide Foundation is supporting this project by financing the purchase of new furniture and computer equipment for the association.

A comment from the Air Liquide sponsor: Laurence Thomazeau “An innovative, credible and well-structured project with a clear ambition and a positioning that complements that of the hospital.”