Children who suffer from cancer, during painful and challenging treatment, lose their hair. The wigmaker Fuad Halilovic and the team of the Association “Heart for Children with Cancer”, who developed the project “My hair, your hair” four years ago, want to bring back a smile on their faces and self-confidence after this exhausting and tiring journey.
Halilovic had cancer as a child. Now, with the commitment of the members of the Association, he makes handmade natural hair wigs for children with cancer. He does it for free, with the selfless help of hair donors, of which there have been about 4.000 so far.
“So far, we have given approximately 40 wigs to little girls and older girls who were up to 27 years old, but unfortunately, the demand is great,” as Halilovic said.
Thanks to good people, Halilovic claims that they have enough hair. In order to make one wig, depending on the density of the hair, they need 6 to 18 hair donations, and to make one wig, it takes him about two weeks. It is important to note that they are the only ones in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) who give these expensive and quality wigs for free.
Although hair is the most valuable resource, he states that making a wig also requires raw material, which costs around 1.200 BAM per piece.
“If someone would like to support us financially, we would be very grateful to them. They can do that by calling the number 17010, which enables them to donate 2 BAM, or by direct payments to the bank account of Raiffeisen bank 161 00000 388 900 27, ” he told.
Halilovic pointed out that he mastered the craft of wig-making through his participation in the project “My hair, your hair” since he completed a series of educations and high school in that field.
“After the association collects money and hair, when a little girl or girl who is older comes for treatment and when her hair falls out after the therapy, we make a wig. Our priority is children with cancer “, he pointed out.
But, they also found that many young people in BiH suffer from alopecia, permanent hair loss, so they decided to help that group as well.
“Wigs are expensive, a handmade wig made of natural hair can cost from 2.5 to 5 thousand euros, depending on the length of the hair, and we are the only ones in BiH who give them away for free,” confirmed Halilovic.
Every wig they made and donated was made according to the measure of the girl’s head and the hairstyle she had before she lost her hair. When a girl puts a wig on her head, as he emphasized, it is completely identical to the hairstyle she had before and it is very difficult to notice any difference.
“We found ourselves in the situations where we were convinced that we were doing something great. For instance, it happened that during the haircut action within the project” My hair, your hair ” the hairdresser of the girl who got our wig expressed willingness to donate his hair,” Halilovic said.
The Health Insurance Institute of the Federation of BiH does not cover the costs of this kind of medical device regardless of age, gender, or medical diagnosis, and domestic and international private insurers treat such devices differently from case to case, BHRT writes.
E.Dz.
