Dubai teen loses grandma to breast cancer, donates hair, turns grief into advocacy
At just 10 years old, Saiyette Aima watched cancer change her family.
Her grandmother, whom she describes as the “emotional centre” of the family, had noticed what appeared to be a small, pimple-like mark on her neck. It did not seem serious at first. But after medical investigations, she was diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer.
Saiyette, now 17 and living in Dubai, was young and thousands of kilometres away from her grandmother in Delhi, but the experience stayed with her.
“I watched her go through chemotherapy and radiation and saw how cancer affected not just her health, but our entire family,” Saiyette told Khaleej Times
Saiyette & Her Elder Sister with Grandmother
Her grandmother later died in 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, when travel restrictions made an already difficult period even harder for the family.
“My parents, my sister and I were the only people in our family that lived here in Dubai. The rest of my family lived with her in Delhi,” she said.
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Looking back, Saiyette says she was too young to fully understand what was happening at the time.
“Cancer was almost like a whispered word in our home,” she said. “As I grew older, that’s when I began to realise that this silence, or tiptoeing around cancer, could itself be part of the problem.”
Starting with her hair
Her first attempt to do something came through a simple gesture. Saiyette and her sister cut and donated their hair through Locks of Hope, a programme by Friends of Cancer Patients that supports cancer patients experiencing hair loss during chemotherapy.
“It was a small gesture, but it taught me that I don’t have to wait until I have a large platform or extensive resources to begin helping,” she said.
That small act eventually grew into something much larger.
Last year, Saiyette launched For Her, For Hope, a fundraising campaign through YallaGive in support of Friends of Cancer Patients.
With support from the community, she said the campaign raised approximately Dh10,400. She was later recognised as YallaGive’s Fundraising Hero of the Month.
But raising money also made the teenager notice something else.
“People were often more comfortable donating to cancer-related causes than actually speaking about cancer,” she said.
That observation became part of the motivation behind Pink for Purpose
Through the project, Saiyette has interviewed oncologists, surgeons and other healthcare professionals about subjects ranging from early warning signs and treatment to recovery, lifestyle and inherited cancer risks.
For her, the focus is particularly on making those conversations accessible to young people and families who may otherwise find cancer difficult to discuss.
From conversations to screenings
Eventually, Saiyette wanted the work to move beyond online awareness.
Earlier this year, she helped organise a breast cancer awareness and screening programme in India, working with medical professionals from AIIMS New Delhi and the National Cancer Institute.
More than 150 women attended, according to Saiyette, with participants learning about breast self-awareness, potential warning signs and when to seek medical advice.
Several women were advised to seek further medical evaluation after the screenings.
For Saiyette, that was particularly significant because of what happened to her grandmother.
The experience had shown her, she said, “how easily early signs can be missed, even in informed families with access to healthcare and doctors”.
“A woman may have heard that early detection matters, but she still may face low health literacy, fear, uncertainty, language barriers or embarrassment,” she said.
For some of the women attending the programme, she added, it was one of their first comfortable interactions with formal healthcare.
Taking the mission into tech
Saiyette is now taking that same idea into another field she has been interested in since childhood: technology.
She has developed CareCheck, a digital breast-health platform that she says is currently being finalised before becoming publicly available.
The platform is designed to guide women through breast self-checks, provide reminders and allow them to record changes and maintain a symptom history. It is also intended to simplify complex medical information and help users find healthcare providers nearby.
Saiyette is careful to stress that the platform is not intended to diagnose breast cancer or replace a doctor.
“Its purpose is to help a woman recognise that something has changed and then understand whether they need to seek professional attention,” she said.
She is currently seeking feedback from doctors and organisations she has worked with before the platform is made available.
And despite spending much of her teenage years speaking to doctors and working around healthcare, Saiyette does not plan to become one herself.
After finishing school, she hopes to study computer science or computer science engineering in the US or UK, with a particular focus on artificial intelligence.
“The emotional ties that I’ve had through cancer have made me realise that I can use CS within the healthcare industry without being a doctor or a nurse,” she said.
Seven years after her grandmother’s diagnosis first brought cancer into her life, Saiyette still carries those memories with her.
“I just know that she’s hopefully proud of everything that I’ve accomplished in her memory,” she said.
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