Ted was diagnosed with Infantile Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia when he was 6 months old. He was given a 50% chance of survival. That was 2 years ago and he has responded really well to treatment. He is one of many children who are the faces of the new Be child cancer aware charity, and it is this charity that we are raising funds for through our swimathon.
The government currently give NO funding to any awareness campaigns for childhood cancer, yet childhood cancers claims more children than any other disease. We aim to reach as many families in the uk as we are able, to familiarise them with the signs and symptoms of childhood cancer. This all comes at a cost though, so we are aiming to swim the equivalent width of the English channel (1360 lengths)
Ted will open the event by swimming the first length in his arm bands. He will have only just finished his 2 years chemotherapy when he does this. Please help support him in his goal and dig deep.
Childhood cancer is not rare, it is claiming too many of our children. There are 10,000 children receiving treatment for cancer in the UK at any one moment in time, and 10 families every day will be told their child has cancer. 28% of these children won't survive, a % of which will be through late diagnosis!
Please help us get the word out and try to change these statistics.
Please look in our video section to see Ted appearing on channel 5 news, and a video made by our friend Carl Finn to show some of his journey with cancer!
We are using the Maria Watt Foundation's charity number to help us raise funds for this event. Be child cancer aware is still in the process of registering as a charity, so we currently don't have our own number. All funds raised for this event, will be given to the BCCA campaign.
You can read more about Maria and the amazing, gifted person she was here
http://www.maria-watt.memory-of.com/About.aspx
and thank you to her mum Diane for allowing us to use this number, and for all the tireless work she puts in to raising child cancer awareness!
