“My name is Eliaz. I’m 14 years old.”
This is how he introduces himself, with simplicity. But behind these few words lies a story marked by an immense trial: cancer.
It all began in the summer of 2022. While still playing football in his club, Eliaz started feeling unusually tired, sometimes even shivering with cold during his matches, while the other players kept running. “I thought it was strange compared to the others. I was really tired. I felt cold, even though normally, when you run, you don’t feel cold anymore,” he recalls.
The months went by, but the pain grew stronger. On December 24, 2022, everything changed. “I started vomiting. I went to the hospital with my grandmother. I had an MRI, and a nurse came to tell us: it’s more serious than we thought.”
His mother, Charlotte, still remembers the shock: “It’s like a weight falling on your head. You don’t expect it, you don’t see it coming. When they tell you it’s a tumor, and that it’s cancerous, you realize that if nothing is done, it will spread. Thankfully, there were no metastases yet.”
The very next day, on Christmas Day, Eliaz underwent emergency surgery. A painful but necessary step to remove this brain tumor.
The fight of a teenager against illness
After the operation, doctors announced the next step: intensive chemotherapy. “I learned what it was, all the side effects it would have—that I would vomit, that I would lose my hair,” explains Eliaz, with an impressive maturity for his age.
The following months were filled with treatments, countless hospital visits, rehabilitation, and extreme fatigue. “Less than a year ago, I couldn’t even walk anymore. I had to relearn, step by step.”
Today, Eliaz is in remission. His voice lights up when he says: “Now, I’ve become almost like I was before.”
For him, this battle has also become a symbol. “Go fight win, it means a lot to me because I really fought,” he says. And his mother adds with conviction: “You have to keep hope. Life is right there in front of us. You have to hold on, fight, keep going. You must never give up.”
Childhood cancer: a cause that concerns us all
Eliaz’s story is not an isolated one. Every year in France, 2,500 children and teenagers are diagnosed with cancer. Cancer remains the leading cause of disease-related death in children over the age of one.
Yet, despite the urgency, research dedicated to pediatric cancers remains severely underfunded.
“When we talk about cancer, we think of adults, rarely of children. But there are too many, far too many,” Charlotte reminds us. Behind these numbers are devastated families, difficult treatment journeys, but also an incredible will to live and to hope.
Imagine for Margo: giving hope to children and families
Faced with this reality, the association Imagine for Margo – Children without Cancer has been committed since 2011 to accelerating research and mobilizing support to fund treatments adapted to children.
Thanks to donations and the generosity of thousands of families and partners, more than €23 million have already been allocated to research, enabling the launch or acceleration of over 60 innovative programs.
“Every day, research makes progress. Every day, people contribute to it. And every day, children benefit from it,” Charlotte emphasizes. But the road is still long, and every action matters: donations, participation in charity events, spreading the word…
As Eliaz says so well: “You have to trust the medical teams, go through the trial, and then get back to your normal life—like I did today.”
If you want to take action for children, you can make a donation or discover other ways to help.
Eliaz invites you to the Rallye du Cœur in Brittany – October 4, 2025
Eliaz’s fight continues today through his commitment. He will be present at the Rallye du Cœur in Brittany, on Saturday, October 4, 2025. This solidarity event brings together car enthusiasts and families around a shared goal: raising funds for pediatric cancer research, in partnership with Imagine for Margo.
Come in great numbers to support Eliaz, share a moment of emotion and solidarity, and drive together toward a future where no child will lose their life to cancer.