The Formosa Cancer Foundation on Tuesday launched a Web site for cancer patients to borrow wigs online, after it found that transportation and other considerations prevented many people from visiting its centers in person.
In addition to providing cancer patients with support in their treatment and care, the foundation’s centers in Taipei and Kaohsiung offer a wig loan service, it said.
To give cancer patients ample time to select and try on the wigs, the centers take appointments for the service by telephone, it said.
Photo: CNA
However, the foundation discovered that last year, about 30 percent of people were unable to keep their appointments, it said.
The patients’ poor health, medical needs, professional or caregiving responsibilities, as well as the weather were among the reasons for the missed appointments, the foundation said.
Meanwhile, other patients wanted to borrow a wig, but were unable to visit the centers in person due to factors including distance, a lack of transportation or inconvenient transportation, and a lack of friends or relatives to accompany them, it said.
As a result, the foundation created the wig.canceraway.org.tw Web site, which allows cancer patients to borrow the wig they prefer without leaving their homes, in just five steps, it said.
The online platform offers more than 100 wigs in more than 20 styles, the foundation said.
Each medical-grade wig uses about five to eight bundles of hair and costs NT$3,500 to make, foundation chief executive officer Lai Gi-ming (賴基銘) said, urging people to contribute to the foundation’s hair donation and fundraising campaigns.
Women make up about 97 percent of the users of the foundation’s wig loan service, he said.
In terms of age groups, about 35 percent of people who borrow wigs from the foundation are aged 41 to 50, while about 20 percent are aged 31 to 40, he said.
For 38 consecutive years, cancer has ranked first among the top 10 causes of death in Taiwan, the foundation said.
A total of 111,684 people were diagnosed with cancer in 2017, the foundation said, citing the Health Promotion Administration’s cancer registry data.
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