Taiwan Today

Hair donation is becoming a popular way to show concern for cancer patients.

A mini-trend has appeared on school campuses in Taiwan, especially among girls with long, healthy hair. In mid-May this year, 38 students at Taipei Jingmei Girls High School had their hair cut to mark the school’s 50th anniversary. One month later, as the summer vacation approached, 13 pupils at Fu An Elementary School in Taoyuan County, northern Taiwan, took part in a group hair-cutting event. Sleek and beautiful, all of the students’ hair was donated to the Hope Foundation for Cancer Care, a nongovernmental organization (NGO) for cancer patients, and will end up in wigs for patients suffering hair loss as a result of chemotherapy.

“My daughter planned to have her hair cut, but it would’ve been a pity if we’d just thrown it away,” said Lo Ming-zhu (羅明珠), the mother of one hair donor at the Taoyuan school event. “And it’s a great opportunity for children to experience helping people in need.”

As hair loss has long been one of the major concerns of cancer patients, the Hope Foundation began addressing the issue in 2003, one year after the group was established in Taipei. “Quite a few female patients give up in the middle of chemotherapy just because they can’t face the embarrassment of losing their hair and the drastic change in their appearance,” says Elaine Su (蘇連瓔), the foundation’s chief executive officer (CEO). Su speaks from more than 10 years’ experience as a cancer ward nurse at several major hospitals in Taiwan. She notes that unlike natural baldness, hair loss from chemotherapy usually occurs in uneven patches across the patient’s scalp. Even though the hair usually grows back between three to six months after the final round of treatment, many patients find the changes unbearable.

Chemo Consequences

The hair loss problem is an even bigger issue today, Su says, as cancer affects more young adults than in the past, and young patients are often very concerned about their appearance. “These patients might disappear for some time to seek alternative treatments, but when they come back to seek help from the hospital, the illness oftentimes has become terminal,” Su says. “With support and assistance from our foundation, I hope patients can overcome the fear of losing their hair and the other consequences of chemotherapy and receive appropriate treatment as early as possible.”

The Hope Foundation’s support includes advising clients about possible side effects of chemotherapy, providing professional guidance on diet and offering the use of wigs. The foundation provides wigs rent free, although clients must pay a NT$2,000 (US$67) refundable deposit and a NT$300 (US$10) fee for cleaning. Moreover, the NGO’s staff members have ample experience communicating with cancer patients, which helps clients feel at ease when seeking assistance. In contrast, the experience of negotiating with salesclerks in an average wig shop can be quite embarrassing for a cancer patient.

Even so, Wang Yi-hsiu (王怡琇), who was diagnosed with cancer in her facial bones in 2006 at the age of 26, was quite hesitant about seeking help from the NGO. “I felt a great inferiority complex after the surgery and chemotherapy greatly altered my appearance,” she says of her difficultly in interacting with the outside world. When she finally visited the Hope Foundation’s Taipei office, however, she found it quite a relief to talk with the employees and volunteer workers there, some of whom are cancer survivors themselves. Wang came away with greater self-confidence and a secondhand wig that had been donated to the NGO.

In the beginning, Su says the Hope Foundation operated pretty much like many similar NGOs abroad in that it used financial donations to buy new wigs or received secondhand wigs. In 2009, a family member of one of the foundation’s clients suggested calling on people to donate their hair in order to have wigs made. “It’s not so easy to raise money. And there’re people who really want to help but can’t because of their finances. Donating hair is a good way for them to help people,” Su says.

The NGO has contracted a wig manufacturer in southern Taiwan to produce the wigs at a cost of NT$2,700 (US$90) per hairpiece. According to the foundation, the price is several thousand New Taiwan dollars lower than the cheapest prices the group was able to find for store-bought wigs, even though it obtained steep discounts from a number of wig suppliers. The organization provides wigs of human hair only as they are more comfortable for the wearer.

Financial considerations are not the only reason the Hope Foundation uses donated hair, however. “As each wig is made from hair donated by several people, the wearer can feel so much love when putting it on. She’ll know she’s not isolated from society,” Su says.

The CEO says that the organization’s clients are overwhelmingly female, with fewer than 10 men having sought wigs since the service was established. The average client uses a wig for approximately six months. Each hairpiece can be reused for around three years.

Service for Children

The Chou Ta-Kuan Foundation, which was set up in New Taipei City, northern Taiwan in 1997 to help child cancer patients, also accepts donations of hair for wigs. Chou Chin-hua (周進華) co-founded and named the NGO in memory of his son, who died of cancer at the age of 10. The NGO inaugurated a unit to collect hair donations on April 4, 2011—Taiwan’s Children’s Day—and has made 84 hairpieces since then. According to Chang Wan-chen (張菀真), deputy secretary-general of Chou Ta-Kuan, her organization is the only one providing such a service for children in Taiwan.

Another organization that creates wigs for cancer patients is the 20-year-old Skin-Graft with Love Foundation based at Changhua Christian Hospital in central Taiwan. Named after an event in 1928 in which the hospital’s founder took a skin graft from his wife’s thigh to help a boy suffering serious leg ulcers, the organization now focuses on the elderly and cancer patients, two groups of people that need a lot of assistance, says Chan Li-ju (詹麗珠), CEO of the foundation. In 2008, the group began calling on the public to donate their hair for cancer patients. Since then, it has made 750 wigs, most of which are used by patients in central Taiwan. “Easing concerns over hair loss is part of our job to improve the quality of life of cancer patients receiving treatment,” Chan says.

Skin-Graft with Love has chosen its current task with good reason, as cancer has been the leading cause of death for Taiwanese people for the past 30 years. According to the Cabinet-level Department of Health (DOH), 87,189 people were diagnosed with cancer in 2009, up from 59,000 in 2002. There are some 450,000 cancer patients currently undergoing treatment or whose disease has been in remission for less than five years, a key timeframe in long-term cancer survival rates.

The hair donation movement received much attention in 2010, when two well-known enterprises threw their support behind it. American multinational corporation Proctor & Gamble Co. (P&G) stepped in by sponsoring an effort to encourage Taiwanese to donate their hair to the Hope Foundation. Show Lin Beauty Salon, Taiwan’s largest hairdressing chain, also took part by cutting donors’ hair for free at promotional events and at its 250 stores.

In the same year, the DOH began to offer subsidies to Taiwan’s major hospitals to help them set up one-stop service windows for cancer patients. Su says hospitals handling more than 500 cancer cases annually qualify for the subsidy and 54 have set up such units. The Hope Foundation, which played a crucial role in the establishment of the service-window system, is responsible for training staff and promoting the newly created units, where cancer patients and their families can find information and services, including wig fittings.

Although awareness about donating one’s hair obviously has increased in the past two years, the movement has also faced challenges. Yen Ching-chung (嚴慶鍾), a Show Lin executive who oversees his company’s involvement in the campaign, says the majority of the donated hair turned out to be of little use in the beginning because it was too short. Hair for wig making should be at least 30 centimeters long, Yen says, but much of the hair was just 15 centimeters (6 inches) in accordance with the slogan for the campaign—“6 inches of hair, unlimited love.” According to Yen, P&G went ahead with the “6 inches” slogan because it echoed the catch-phrase that company uses to promote pap smear tests to detect cervical cancer—“Spend 6 minutes to save your life”—an effort P&G has funded since 1995.

Indeed, not everyone is a suitable hair donor. In addition to the length requirement, hair should be in healthy condition. The use of permed hair is discouraged as the quality of chemically treated hair tends to be poor. In general, dyed hair is not accepted because a wig involves the use of hair from four to six donors and the color must be the same. In Taiwan, that means black hair, as that is the natural hair color of the overwhelming majority of people. Children’s hair is usually perfect for making wigs, as it has rarely undergone any artificial treatments.

Admiration for Donors

Wang says people who donate their hair are to be admired. “It takes resolve for a young woman to resist perming or dyeing her hair, but that’s what you must do if you want to donate it. And it can be quite uncomfortable to have long hair in hot weather. It also takes more time to wash long hair,” she says. At the end of 2010, the cancer survivor and former wig recipient donated her own hair to the Hope Foundation after her recovery from the disease. “I avoided having my hair thinned out so that I would have enough to donate,” says Wang, who was married in March this year, about five and half years after being diagnosed with cancer and experiencing perhaps the lowest point of her life.

In addition, human hair has a commercial value if its owner chooses to sell it to a wig manufacturer. According to Yen of Show Lin, 30-centimeter-long hair is worth between NT$500 (US$16.70) and NT$1,000 (US$33), depending on its quality.

Yet for all the temptations to alter one’s hair and the inconvenience of growing it long, the hair donation movement has won wide attention and support. The Skin-Graft with Love Foundation says in 2009, only 360 people donated hair to the organization, but the number had increased to 2,016 by 2011. The Hope Foundation, which established a second office in Kaohsiung, southern Taiwan in 2003, currently receives about 70 donations of hair every day. In fact, Su says the biggest issue at the moment for the Hope Foundation is raising enough money to turn the growing amount of donated hair into wigs. In 2011, the group obtained 6,049 donations of hair, but could afford to make only 160 wigs.

P&G is no longer involved in hair donation efforts, but Show Lin continues to sponsor free haircuts for donors. In the spring of 2011, the hair salon chain funded a television advertisement to promote hair donation, and its employees now also offer to style a donor’s hair after cutting it. Moreover, the hair salon chain helps the Hope Foundation raise money by collecting cash donations at each of its stores.

It seems that love in the form of hair donations is spreading in Taiwan. At the Fu An Elementary School hair-cutting activity this summer, parent Lo says the response among people looking on was positive. “Some parents encouraged their children to donate their hair next year, if their hair is long enough by then,” Lo says. “They didn’t know people can help this way, but they do now.”

Write to Oscar Chung at mhchung@mofa.gov.tw