Patients with cancer learn make-up tricks in a new workshop in Egypt

CAIRO: In 2012, Merhan Khalil, a cancer patient, underwent a bone marrow transplant and chemotherapy, her hair began to fall while showering. On Saturday, she joined a workshop in Cairo that teaches cancer patients how to hide the signs of cancer treatment.

"It helps a lot mentally … to feel beautiful and to feel that the drug has not changed us," said Khalil, 46, suffering from multiple myeloma, a cancer of the blood plasma.

The workshop is part of a program already underway in Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates, titled "Be Beautiful", to be launched this month in at least seven hospitals in Egypt. It will provide women with cancer with make-up tips, mental health support and nutrition counseling.

"When the cancer patient feels that she is beautiful and that she gets adequate nutrition, it will have a positive effect on her mental state and strengthen her immune system," said Hanadi el-Imam, founder from the Hoda el-Imam Foundation, which organizes the workshops.

She said the goal was to offer workshops in five Egyptian governorates a year from now.

Faten Fawzi, a breast cancer patient and part of a group of five female patients learning to paint eyebrows and apply conditioner to dry skin at the Cairo Marriott hotel, said that She had the impression that her hair had been burnt after chemotherapy.

"I went to my hairdresser and he shaved it completely.I was devastated and started crying," Fawzi, 46, told Reuters.

"But after that, I put on a classy wig that looked like my hair and you could not tell at all that I had cancer."

She recently got rid of the wig, but Fawzi added that she always combed her eyebrows and cared about her makeup routine because she felt better.

Ghada Salah, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2013, said that she had started experimenting with different colored wigs and hats after losing her hair as a result of chemotherapy.

"I did not want to look sick," she says. "I did not want people to think about the poor, she has cancer."

The organizers hope to serve 5,000 Egyptian women in the first year, said Dina Omar, a cardiologist and one of the founders of Be Beautiful.

Globally, cancer is responsible for one in six deaths, according to the World Health Organization. According to the WHO, about 70% of cancer deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries.

(Edited by Sami Aboudi and Matthew Mpoke Bigg)