How young singer beat blood cancer

The first time Granny Nkuna heard her son, Kagiso, sing, he was feeling depressed and sick after chemotherapy.

Kagiso was 13 then and was living at the Choc Childhood Cancer Foundation, in Saxonwold, Johannesburg. The centre gives accommodation to children with cancer so that they can be near the Donald Gordon Hospital, at which Kagiso was being treated for lymphoma.

Nkuna, whose home is in Carletonville, on the West Rand, was diagnosed with lymphoma, a blood cancer, in 2008, when he was 13 and in Grade 7. He passed his exams for promotion to Grade 8 despite six months of chemotherapy.

The cancer was advanced when it was detected in his spine.

This week, after four years in remission, he will visit his doctors at the Donald Gordon Hospital for a checkup.

"I am excited. I made friends with the nurses and doctors. I will get to see them again."

He will also visit the Choc foundation house after his treatment and talk to the child cancer patients there.

"I am living proof that cancer can be beaten."

Devon Moodley, a Donald Gordon Hospital oncologist, said South Africa did not record cancer survival rates.

But data compiled by the American Association for Cancer Research, released last week, show that one in 23 Americans are cancer survivors.

In 1971, only one in 69 people in the US beat cancer.

Charles Sawyers, p resident of the American Association for Cancer Research , told US website Health Day: " Science is paying off, finally."

But Moodley said: "There is a paucity of data in this field [survival rates] in South Africa.

"The improved survival rates in the First World are attributable to good detection and treatment."

Nkuna has made it his mission to join the "I am the voice of lymphoma campaign" and educate people about cancer and the importance of its early detection.

He had swollen glands and night sweats for a year, and latterly extreme headaches and was coughing blood, before being diagnosed.

His mother said many people still believe that cancer is caused by witchcraft. Kagiso wants to challenge that myth.