Children’s health

Juvenile Diabetes Foundation

I have been a member and supporter of the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation since 2005.

Type 1 Diabetes is an autoimmune disease that destroys the body’s ability to process sugar by attacking the beta cells in our pancreas that produce the hormone insulin. Insulin helps convert sugar into the fuel our bodies need. Without insulin, sugar builds up in our bloodstream in life-threatening amounts. Multiple times each day, insulin needs to be injected into the body of someone living with Type 1 Diabetes.

The Juvenile Diabetes Foundation believes that research is the key to destroying this disease, and drives innovation, demands action, and supports both patients and families living with Type 1 Diabetes.

In fact, this organisation has been involved in every breakthrough in Type 1 Diabetes during the past 40 years.

If you would like to make a donation to this important Foundation, you will be helping to improve the lives of millions of people around the world living with Type 1 Diabetes. Simply click “Donate” below and you will be taken directly to the Foundation’s fundraising page.

Kids’ Cancer Project

The Kids’ Cancer Project is a charitable organisation that funds research initiatives aimed at supporting kids with cancer. The focus is to find better treatments, build capabilities and develop survivorship programs for children with cancer, and their families, and they have promised not to give up until a cure is found.

Our family began regularly donating to the Kids’ Cancer Project when we first heard about their work three years ago, and we are enormously impressed by their work.

For example, a clinical trial funded by The Kids’ Cancer Project is treating a group of young people with relapsed solid tumours, such as osteosarcoma, neuroblastoma and malignant rhabdoid tumours. Tragically, without a medical breakthrough, the five-year survival rate of these children is less than 20 percent.

The treatment trial involves the use of a drug called Panobinostat, which is often used in adult patients with cancers such as multiple myeloma. “What this drug is trying to do is switch the abnormal processes and allow normal pathways to become active again,” explains Dr Paul Wood, a paediatric oncologist at Monash Health in Victoria. “We are trying to get the malignant cancer cells to transform into non-malignant benign tissue.”

At 10 months after the first child was enrolled in the trial, Dr Wood described the progress as encouraging. “The trial hasn’t finished so we can’t give out results, but we are seeing some encouraging outcomes,” he said. “We have certain milestones that we have to reach for the trial to continue and, at the moment, we are achieving those milestones.”
 
These milestones are bringing hope that a cancer-free future for these kids is well within their reach. Please consider making your own donation to support the ongoing research at the Kids’ Cancer Project: simply click the “donate” button below to visit the Project website.