THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Grow your hair long or cut it short. But the next time you do it, do it for a worthy cause. Ashraya, the city-based NGO working among the cancer patients at the Regional Cancer Centre here, is planning to launch a campaign that would encourage people to grow hair and donate it for a cause.Chemotherapy, when applied to fight cancer, often results in hair fall. Dr P T Latha, patient welfare officer at the RCC, said that most breast cancer, leukaemia and lymphoma patients lose hair as a side-effect of the strong medicines used. “Most patients lose self-confidence and find it difficult to move around with a bald head. For those who can afford it, we direct them to wig-makers but for the others we ask them to go for cheap synthetic ones,” said Latha.The synthetic ones generates a lot of heat on the head. The local wig-makers try to make wigs as cheap as possible for the cancer patients, but natural hair is very expensive in the market. So are imported wigs.Santha Jose, president of Ashraya, has been mulling over the idea of collecting natural hair for cancer patients ever since she saw people growing their hair long for such a cause in the US and Canada. “They have a non-profit organisation called ‘Locks of Love’ that provide hair-pieces to the needy. Not just girls, even little boys grow their hair to 12 inches, which is the standard length required for making a wig,” she said.Inspired by ‘Locks of Love,’ Ashraya is working out ways on how to implement the project here and get the beauty parlours and wig-makers involved in the project.Suji, who manages the Happy Life, a hair-fixing as well as wig-selling centre, is very empathetic, himself being a cancer survivor. “I know that the patients would have already spent a lot of money on treatment and try to give the maximum possible discount on the minimum cost of Rs 12,000 for a wig. But it is not something that everyone can afford and we get very few orders from cancer patients,” said Suji.Natural hair, even that of the patient, if collected before it starts to fall, can bring the cost down to just Rs 2,000, said Prakash, proprietor of Prakash Wig Works, that has centres across the state. “We take the measurement of the head and collect a photograph of the patient with the hair so that we get a better idea of how to make it.
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