Paper short abstract:

Parents who abandoned their child’s cancer treatment showed a religious-based logic running in parallel to the oncology teams’ scientific belief system and logic. Poverty and misgivings drive the parents to turn to their church community where traditionally they obtain answers (miracles) and support (financial and emotional).

Paper long abstract:

The parents of children with cancer in El Salvador, who traditionally have relied on their church community for material and spiritual support, expressed their belief in a miracle cure and abandoned their child’s medical treatment. Consequently, most of these children relapse and die from their disease.

The parents were convinced that a miraculous healing had occurred or would soon occur, and trusted that God would protect their child from cancer better than the medical treatment could. They framed their faith-based accounts in living circumstances of material scarcity and vulnerability, and/or misgivings towards their child’s treatment and/or medical procedures. Their bad past experiences with the health system and in general with institutions supposed to provide services for the needed fed the lack of trust in a treatment that showed as many risks for their child’s life as the cancer. The parents viewed reliance on God’s power to perform a miracle as a reasonable alternative therapeutic option.

The oncology team relies instead on their own scientific belief system to persuade the parents to continue the child’s treatment. Provision of information and material resources to help the families were not always a direct way to build their trust on the treatment and brought new sources of uncertainty.

In the context of structural vulnerability and mistrust towards institutions, and the uncertainty about treatment procedures and results, abandoning treatment relying on religious faith and the hope for a miracle seemed to the parents the more suitable resource for coping with and curing their child’s cancer.