Alfies Wish

I am honoured to be running the London Marathon in April to help raise money for my good friends son, Alfie. Please make a donation it would be greatly appreciated and possibly life changing. Please read below Alfie's story and why I am raising money for him.

Alfie is a happy and loving 8 year old boy that always has a smile on his face. Unfortunately behind that smile alfie has a condition called x-linked hyper igm syndrome. It's a condition that affects the immune system and only occurs in males. This means Alfie is prone to catch recurrent infections that could be life threatening. Alfie receives a weekly infusion of immunoglobulin and is also on permanent oral antibiotics. These medicines don't stop infection but help keep them at bay. Alfie has to have boiled water to prevent catching infection called cryptosporidium which can be picked up from drinking tap water. Alfies medicine does not protect him from this infection, if caught this could be life threatening to him. The older he gets the more serious his condition will get due to recurrent infections. His body will have to fight harder to recover, this is down to the damage infections leave behind. The only permanent cure for alfies condition is either a bone marrow transplantation or cord blood stem cell transplantation. Due to Alfie having a rare tissue type it is very difficult to find a 10 out of 10 match. So therefore we are trying to raise money for pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) with HLA matching, this is body tissue matching. This is an IVF procedure where eggs and sperm cells are fertilized outside the womb and embryos can be selected with a particular tissue type which could help in treatment of a genetic condition in another child. Also PGD can be used as a way of having a healthy child without the genetic condition. The cost of this treatment would be at least £10,000 per attempt