History
Prior to the mid-1980s, there was no infrastructure for treating cancer patients in Jordan. For quality care, wealthy patients sought treatment abroad, while those without means were treated locally, with limited resources and poor results.
In 1997, the Al-Amal Center, meaning “The Center of Hope”, opened its doors. This much-need cancer-specific hospital was established to provide the many patients in Jordan with quality care comparable to that offered in the West. To honor the late King Hussein, who had died of cancer, the Center was renamed the King Hussein Cancer Center in 2002.
From 2002-2006, the hospital intensely focused on areas of quality control, and the recruitment of highly-qualified staff. Patients, patient services, programs and staff exponentially increased at a rapid pace. The focus, from its inception, was to deliver the highest level of care in a safe environment.
In 2006, Mahmoud Sarhan became the Director General and CEO of the King Hussein Cancer Center. Dr. Sarhan, a former Professor of Pediatrics in the Bone Marrow and Stem Cell Transplantation Program at Duke University, was an instrumental figure in the Center’s establishment. He founded KHCC’s Bone Marrow Transplantation (BMT) program in 2003, a program which has become one of the largest and most successful BMT programs in the Middle East. It is one of the largest (performing approximately 100 bone marrow transplants each year) and most successful programs in the Middle East, achieving cure rates compatible with international standards. The program oversees both matched allogeneic and autologous transplants and performs transplants utilizing cord blood, making it the only program in Jordan and the second in the region that offers such a highly specialized procedure. Other non-cancer cases are also treated through the KHCC BMT program including thalassemia, aplastic anemia and other metabolic diseases.
Read more about this topic: King Hussein Cancer Center
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“In nature, all is useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore beautiful, because it is alive, moving, reproductive; it is therefore useful, because it is symmetrical and fair. Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America its history in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“... in a history of spiritual rupture, a social compact built on fantasy and collective secrets, poetry becomes more necessary than ever: it keeps the underground aquifers flowing; it is the liquid voice that can wear through stone.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“Spain is an overflow of sombreness ... a strong and threatening tide of history meets you at the frontier.”
—Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)