By Abdulaziz Hammad
Saudi Gazette
SOCIAL activist Hana’a Iskandar passed away at the age of 24 in King Abdulaziz University Hospital Thursday morning after a long battle with cancer.
Her untimely death left the Saudi community in shock with many lamenting her death as tragic and sad. The news of her death trended in Twitter with the hashtag getting 85,000 tweets in the first four hours.
The tweets, while mourning the death of the young woman, also saw a huge interaction between her followers on social media, with many praising her for continuing to work, despite ill health, on the campaign started by her late brother Hamza.
She passed away just four months following the death of her brother Hamza Iskander, also a social activist who too lost his battle with cancer. He launched many social media campaigns to fight cancer, but the most popular one that caught everyone’s imagination was “I Fight Cancer With My Smile”.
After his death she continued his campaigns with a drive that matched her brother’s will. She said her efforts to keep Hamza’s campaign going, was due to the fact that Hamza was a great idol, and she too in her own small way was encouraging other cancer patients to fight the disease with courage.
Hana’a was working on the design for a cancer support center, which was her brother Hamza’s dream. She had started collecting money for the center and was building up capital. She, in an earlier interview, had stressed, “The center would be everything — more than a hospital for cancer patients — with its main goal to help and encourage the patients to accept and live with the disease.”
