“Nourette was the nickname of a little girl named Nour. She was my daughter, recounts Gaël Lamant. "And this little girl, like 2,500 children in France each year, was diagnosed with cancer, leukemia, in 2017. She joined the angels in December 2021, after four and a half years of fighting the disease.” This is the starting point of the association Nourette.
During these years, Nour visited no less than fifteen hospitals, those that treated her near her home, the Robert Debré expert center, and the local hospital in Colombes, as well as local facilities during trips or vacations, for blood or platelet transfusions.
“The observation we made is that the level of care in France is excellent,” explains Gaël Lamant. “However, the budget is constrained for everything related to well-being, improvement, and enrichment of the children's environment in the hospital. So we thought we should set up an association to improve the daily lives of hospitalized children, to come play with them, organize activities in their rooms, or carry out renovation projects, thus enchanting the rooms, the hallways, and creating spaces so that the hospital is less frightening for children.” These are among the missions of the Nourette association.
So taking care of children. Also looking after the parents since they spend almost all their time at the hospital for sometimes very long periods. But also focusing on the well-being of caregivers "because Nour understood how crucial their role was at the bedside of children to help them fight the disease,” emphasizes Gaël Lamant.
Finally, the Nourette association participates in funding research against pediatric cancers. Each year, 500 children do not survive in France. The cure rates are 80%, but they have stagnated for several years, despite the arrival of new treatments.
“We need dedicated funding, as children's cancers are not like those in adults. They are different diseases that therefore require targeted research. And the problem is that in France, there is very little funding for research against pediatric cancers. So if there is one message we need to convey at the national level, it is that public authorities, politicians, and society at large must mobilize to save our children. Children are important in a society, it seems to me.”
Since its creation, Nourette has been able to donate €80,000 to research on children's cancers. “It's little, it barely covers a year of researchers. But if each association does this, little streams make big rivers, we will eventually get there.”
