Disease Awareness

It was hard enough that Savi Abdallah-Sinha was only a 2-year-old when he began undergoing chemotherapy treatment to rid his body of leukemia.

From advertising icon to pediatric cancer pal, the Aflac duck has transformed from a TV commercial attention-getter to a trusted friend for children with cancer.

Every day, people endure the painful and life-threatening symptoms of sickle cell disease in the shadows because of fear, stigma,and isolation

Almost 2 million.

That's how many people around the world are infected with HIV each year, despite great advancements in treatment and prevention. And in sub-Saharan Africa, young women are twice as likely to be living with HIV than men.

Worldwide, 13% of women who've just given birth experience a mental disorder—most commonly postpartum depression, which can leave new moms with feelings of sadness, hopelessness and emptiness that can last for more than two weeks after delivery. What researchers hypothesize could be to blame: a complex interplay of physical and emotional factors, like fluctuating hormone levels and lack of access to adequate social support.

At Alexion, people with rare and devastating diseases are our inspiration. We know that beginning with their first symptoms through an often long path to diagnosis and treatment, living with a rare disease is a sobering new normal to navigate while managing other life priorities.

At the delivery event, attendees were treated to a demonstration of My Special Aflac Duck, highlighting how it will help comfort children and serve as a tool for health care professionals to use with their patients. After the demonstration, children and their parents went on a fun scavenger hunt, finding clues and visiting various locations throughout the oncology unit, eventually leading them to the discovery of their very own My Special Aflac Duck®.

This June, Subaru, our retailers, and The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society are working together through the Subaru Loves to Care initiative to spread hope, love, and warmth to those fighting cancer through gestures of caring.

World AIDS Day takes place on December 1 each year. The day was first recognized in 1988 to raise awareness of the AIDS pandemic, show support for people living with HIV and remember those who died of AIDS-related causes. Our commitment to fighting HIV and AIDS began in 1986 in the San Francisco Bay Area when we started to see HIV/AIDS affecting our employees and communities first hand. A few years later, our company recognized that some of our largest operations were in areas where the grip of AIDS was growing rapidly.

in support of the SickKids Herbie Fund, Scotiabank announced a new $1 million donation to support Phase Two of the SickKids-Caribbean Initiative, a project with a goal of helping to build a sustainable program to diagnose and treat paediatric cancer and serious blood disorders in the Caribbean. The initiative – in which Scotiabank is recognized as the Telemedicine Partner – connects doctors at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) in Toronto with doctors in six countries in the Caribbean to help improve – and in many cases, save the lives of young people.