At 10, she lost her grandmother to breast cancer; at 17, Dubai teen Saiyette Aima built an AI platform and took cancer awareness to India

At 10, Saiyette Aima could not understand the medical language around breast cancer. But its consequences were clear to her from the get-go. Her grandmother was diagnosed with Stage 3 disease after noticing a small, pimple-like mark on her neck, she began chemotherapy and radiation and the family quickly entered a period of treatment and uncertainty. While she was thousands of miles away from her grandmother in Delhi, the experience stayed with her. Now, cancer was no longer a disease she read about on paper, it was a part of her life. “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.Her grandmother later died in 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, when travel restrictions made the event 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.Beginning of an effortA few years later, the Dubai College student cut her locks and donated them through Locks of Hope, a Friends of Cancer Patients programme that provides wigs for people undergoing chemotherapy. “Hair loss is such a visible part of treatment for many patients, and it felt like a simple, practical thing I could do,” said the now 17-year-old. “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 added. This marked just the beginning of her initiative for bettering the lives of cancer patients.Aima launched For Her, For Hope, a fundraising campaign through YallaGive. While she initially aimed to collect Dh5,000 by approaching her school, family, friends and community, the final amount exceeded Dh10,400 and earned her recognition as YallaGive's Fundraising Hero of the Month. The money supported Pink Caravan, the Friends of Cancer Patients initiative that promotes awareness and offers free screenings.A perceptive and dedicated teenager, Aima soon realised that a single campaign could only help so much. She then created Pink for Purpose, a cancer-awareness initiative.Many people had questions they felt uncomfortable asking and complex medical terminology only made the information difficult to absorb. Thus, she expanded Pink for Purpose into a YouTube channel featuring oncologists and other specialists discussing warning signs, screening, treatment, inherited risks, recovery and the emotional effects of cancer. The conversations also improved her own understanding of the truly life-changing disease. Treatment varies widely among patients; its effects may continue through physical symptoms, and people may also face reduced confidence, fear of recurrence and uncertainty within families. “Cancer can affect almost every part of a person’s life,” she said.Her conversations extended to include educational sessions and magazine content with IntelliJelly, which published her writing and featured an awareness video.Awareness work in IndiaThe most direct phase of her advocacy took her to India, where she helped organise free awareness and screening camps with doctors from AIIMS New Delhi and the National Cancer Institute in Jhajjar. Conversations with 150 attendees exposed her to numerous practical barriers: uncertainty about bodily changes, limited opportunities to ask questions, and health advice obscured by language or terminology. “Giving someone health information is only useful if they can actually understand it and know what to do with it,” she said.CareCheck: An AI platformAll of these experiences and questions transformed into the creation of CareCheck, Aima's proposed AI-powered breast-health platform. It will offer local-language guidance on breast self-awareness, allow users to record concerns, simplify medical information and locate nearby professional care. The platform is designed to guide women through breast self-checks, provide reminders and allow them to record changes and maintain a symptom history. Doctors and healthcare organisations are reviewing its content, wording and safety boundaries.“CareCheck does not diagnose cancer and it does not replace a doctor,” she said. Its purpose is more precise: helping a woman understand a concern, document it and reach appropriate care. She said that the platform is currently being finalised before becoming publicly available.After finishing school, she hoped to study computer science or computer engineering in 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.Catch the latest World News and Live updates. Download the TOI app.