About Elimination of Leukaemia Fund

Each year in the UK over 21,500 people contract a blood cancer.  Such diseases can strike anyone at anytime. 

 

Until the mid 1960s the diagnosis of blood cancer was a death sentence. Today 80% of children with leukaemia, and 50% of adults under 65 years, are cured. 

 

Rapid progress continues, although about 9,500 patients still die each year.

 

ELF’s mission is to advance the cure and treatment of leukaemia and other blood cancers throughout the UK.  It aims to identify projects of national and sometimes international significance, to raise the funds required and to ensure each project is delivered on time and on budget.

 

Since being set up, the Charity has raised over £4.5 million and has provided support for research into blood cancers, facilities for the care and support of patients and for education, mainly through its Fellowship scheme.  One of the main considerations adopted by the charity in selecting projects to support is that there must be benefit to patients.

 

Past Projects:

Leukaemia Treatment Suite at King’s College Hospital, London.

Optimum Bone Marrow Donor Project, which developed a new technique to identify this for each individual patient.

Minimal Residual Detection Project, this solved a main problem in delivering effective leukaemia treatment.

Day Patients’ Treatment Unit at King’s College Hospital, London.

Counsellor and Patient Support Group Administrator, which provides a full counselling service to leukaemia sufferers and their families.

Humanscape. This project allows people with leukaemia and related blood cancers and their relatives and carers to express their feelings about living with the disease either through painting, drawing and words.

 

Current Projects:

Myelodysplastic Syndrome, Therapy Related Malignancy, Dendritic Cell Differentiation and Hybrid Vaccine, which are all medical research projects. 

Interactive CD-Rom, which allows patients easy access to information about blood cancers, the nature of the disease, it’s treatment and outcomes.

Travel and Training Fellowship scheme for doctors, nurses and scientists. 

 

Our history

In the 1970s, Isobel Mitchell, the wife of the landlord at the ‘Change of Horses’, Farnborough, Kent, developed leukaemia and was treated at King’s College Hospital, London.  Derek was impressed by the help his wife received and decided to raise money to support King’s haematological department. 

 

As a result of Derek’s efforts the Elimination of Leukaemia Fund (ELF) was formed in 1977 and was registered as a charity in May 1981. 

In the early years, the money raised was almost entirely from local supporters and was all used to support the work at King’s.  From the early 1990s however, as the charity expanded, it began to seek support from all parts of the UK and, although the charity still provides major support to King’s, it is now committed to supporting work in other parts of the country.