Last week, KnowTheGlow Co-Founder, Megan Webber, and her team sat down to speak with Monika König of Kinder Augen Krebs Stiftung (KAKS), the Children’s Eye Cancer Foundation of Germany. The organization has been doing amazing and inspirational work for 12 years focused on spreading awareness about retinoblastoma and advocating for frequent and early vision checks.
The journey began when Monika and her husband, Gregor König, wanted to spread awareness to share information about the glow after their own experience with leukocoria after their youngest daughter was diagnosed with retinoblastoma. Fourteen years ago, children ages 0-5 in Germany were not being screened for eye diseases. Typically the first time children’s eyes were examined was in elementary school, thus making early detection of eye diseases such as retinoblastoma extremely difficult. Recognizing this challenge and ready to effect change, the Children’s Eye Cancer Foundation of Germany was born.
The Children’s Eye Cancer Foundation of Germany battled for eight years to implement eye screening into early pediatric care. Though it started with just retinoblastoma, Monika knew it was important to include the many other pediatric eye diseases that could be identified and treated when detected early with early screening knowledge of symptoms such as leukocoria. After eight years of advocating for early screening, children in Germany now receive a visual screening at 5 days, 1 month, 6 months, and 1 year, leading to countless children being diagnosed much earlier, allowing for eye diseases such as retinoblastoma to be treated, saving the sight and even the lives of children in her country.
The Children’s Eye Cancer Foundation of Germany’s work did not stop after the successes in Germany. They wanted to help implement similar early screening programs in other countries as well, so they began a fellowship program for doctors in foreign countries passionate about retinoblastoma. Monika and Gregor first flew to Bangladesh, building close relationships with the doctors there in order to work together to develop and implement an early screening program. They worked to create awareness in medical professionals as well as the public and they achieved great success! Doctors in Bangladesh are now finding children with all types of eye diseases, many of which are easily treatable. Later, the Königs flew to Nepal to build relationships with doctors there hoping to again institute a similar early visual screening program.
Beyond their domestic and international work in implementing pediatric eye screening programs, the Children’s Eye Cancer Foundation of Germany has created amazing awareness campaigns like their campaign “See the Light,” focused on promoting awareness of leukocoria, one of the early signs of retinoblastoma, a cause that KnowTheGlow focuses on as well.
KnowTheGlow is proud to highlight the incredible work of KAKS and looks forward to sharing more news of their successes in the future! For more information on The Children’s Eye Cancer Foundation of Germany, please visit their website at https://www.kinderaugenkrebsstiftung.de/en/homepage/ .
