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More than 1,500 children and adolescents get cancer every year.

But there are fewer than 70 doctors nationwide to treat them.

So, there are a lot of attempts with no or only one or two pediatric cancer doctors, but it seems that this problem will become more serious in the future. 



By Park Byung-il, staff reporter.



<Reporter>



Rohee was born last March in Gwangju.



He was diagnosed with a brain tumor at a nearby university hospital and had to undergo surgery in Seoul.



[Heo Hye-rim/Mother of pediatric cancer patients: They said that the baby is too young and difficult to do (surgery).]



It is impossible to go from Gwangju to Seoul every week for treatment or examination. I'm staying here and a big thing has happened recently.



[Heo Hye-rim/Mother of pediatric cancer: In the evening, Ro-hee suddenly had a fever and went to the ○○ hospital near (Sejong City).

There now she has no hematology department at all, so she has a little bigger hospital, so she went there again, the ER.

Then she said that there was no pediatrician there who could treat a child like this.]



Eventually, she had to drive me to Seoul at 2am.



[Heo Hye-rim/Mother of pediatric cancer: The reason I keep regretting is that I will just come here, I think I felt once more, the sadness of the region.]



At the end of last year, Yesol was born in Jinju, Gyeongnam.



I had spots all over my body, and I went to various departments in a large hospital in Gyeongnam to find the cause, but it finally happened over the Lunar New Year holiday.



[Lee Clear Sky/Mother of Childhood Cancer: I vomited like a fountain and my eyes were yellow, but now I have to go to the emergency room at the beginning of the Lunar New Year holiday, and you are asking me why I am here now.]



The bigger problem was that I had no intention to treat it.



[Lee Sun-kun / Mother of Childhood Cancer: Because it is a holiday, there are no professors, so you have to go to a big hospital right away (they said)] I



got into an ambulance and ran to a university hospital in Seoul to save my life, but it was acute myeloid leukemia.



More than 1,500 children and adolescents develop cancer each year, and only 68 are pediatric oncologists.



There are at most four or five people in each province except Seoul, and there are none in Gangwon, Gyeongbuk, and Sejong.



The bigger problem is that the filling rate for pediatrics and adolescents has fallen every year, and this year it is less than 30%.



[Kim Ji-hong/Chairman of the Korean Academy of Pediatrics: 70% of the majors have a manpower vacancy, so you can think of 40% of the hospitals that can properly visit the (pediatric) emergency room in the country right now.]



Pediatric and Adolescent Medical Even the system collapse is concerned, and the government and the medical community seem urgently need to come up with countermeasures.



(VJ: Yoon Taek)