Cancer sufferers offered yoga, wigs, qigong and more at Hong Kong Cancer Fund centres
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Ms Kin, not her real name, sits in front of a mirror admiring her new short dark hairstyle. “She likes it,” says an interpreter who is also a volunteer hairstylist with the Hong Kong Cancer Fund.
We’re in the “wig room” at one of the fund’s branches (there are five citywide), this one in the industrial district of Kwai Chung in Hong Kong’s New Territories. A box of colourful scarves sits on the table; a top shelf is lined with a variety of shiny wigs.
Free hairstyling, wig loans and haircare advice is available here, one of the many programmes offered by the fund; it also provides home visits and integrative therapies including yoga, qigong, tai chi, gong therapy, chanting, drumming, meditation, and art workshops. Annual attendance for its wellness programmes citywide for 2017-18 was almost 52,000.
“My helper has three wigs and she looks 20 years younger – she looks like a teenager,” says Sally Lo, chief executive of the fund, which she founded in 1987.
Lo is all too familiar with cancer. She lost her best friend to stomach cancer in 1986 and two years ago her husband of 50 years and her helper of 45 years were diagnosed with cancer in the same week.