‘We had to take out loans’: Cupcake campaign helps families reach cancer treatment - IOL

Dr Dr Able Nxobile Mdhluli’s cancer journey shows how transport, food and accommodation costs can burden families. National Cupcake Day aims to help ease that load.

When thousands of South Africans bake cupcakes on 26 September, the money raised will help families meet costs that can become barriers to a child facing cancer treatment.

Among those who know the gravity of that support is Dr Able Nxobile Mdhluli, who was 13 when she was diagnosed with leukaemia, turning hospital visits and repeated journeys from Bushbuckridge in Mpumalanga to Gauteng into part of everyday life.

At first, those trips were about every two weeks; later, they became monthly.

Mdhluli’s story comes ahead of National Cupcake Day on 26 September, when Cupcakes of Hope is calling on thousands of South Africans to become volunteer “Cupcake Angels” to raise money for children with cancer and their families.

Now 25, Mdhluli is a qualified doctor living in Johannesburg.  She remembers the repeated journeys as a major part of her treatment experience.

“There were times when I was already feeling weak or unwell, but we still had to make the journey because my treatment could not simply be postponed.”

At the time, Mdhluli was mostly focused on getting better and did not fully understand what her illness was costing the family.

Her father, Lyson Mdhluli, 60, remembers the diagnosis bringing fear as well as an immediate upheaval in the family’s life.

“We were devastated when we heard the diagnosis. I kept asking myself, ‘Where does this disease come from?’ It felt like death could come at any moment,” he said.

Mdhluli said each trip cost the family about R1 800 per trip, while food, accommodation and other expenses added to the financial strain.

Cupcakes of Hope assisted the family with transport, accommodation and meals for more than a year.

Dr Tanya Krakowitzer, a paediatric oncologist, said paediatric oncology was highly specialised, with relatively few treatment units and appropriately trained specialists in South Africa.

Because these services are concentrated mainly in larger urban centres, children from rural areas and smaller towns may travel hundreds of kilometres for diagnosis, chemotherapy, surgery, radiotherapy, specialised imaging and follow-up care. Those journeys can continue for months or even years.

“The diagnosis affects the entire family, not only the child,” Krakowitzer said.

Cupcakes of Hope founder Sandy Cipriano said transport, food, nutritional needs, nappies and other basic necessities were among the expenses families regularly needed help with.

“A child’s treatment may be provided through the public healthcare system, but families still have to find a way to get to the hospital, eat while they are there, find somewhere to stay when treatment takes place far from home, and continue providing for their other children and household,” she said.

Cipriano said the number of children supported by Cupcakes of Hope had nearly quadrupled since 2020, with more than 140 young cancer patients now receiving financial assistance each month. In July, 200 patients received support.

She attributed the growing demand partly to rising living costs, which have made transport, food, accommodation and basic household expenses increasingly difficult for families to absorb. At the same time, some parents have to reduce their working hours or stop working altogether to care for their child.

In 2025, Cupcakes of Hope granted 1987 requests for financial assistance, celebrated 80 birthdays and delivered 3 766 care bags. The organisation also works with all 21 paediatric oncology wards across South Africa.

National Cupcake Day is Cupcakes of Hope’s biggest annual fundraising and awareness campaign. In 2025, more than 2,400 Cupcake Angels raised over R2 million.

This year’s events will take place at more than 80 shopping centres across South Africa, with schools, workplaces and communities also participating. Volunteers can register as Cupcake Angels, choose a participating shopping centre and pledge to bake 24 cupcakes.