On Sunday October 11 this year, a team of Toby Greeves’ family and other special people will be running the Oxford Half Marathon in memory of a beautiful, brave little boy.

On August 5, 2014, Toby David Hotspur Greeves was delivered by emergency C-section due to a placental abruption. He was born eleven weeks premature and weighed just 720gms. He was cared for at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at Southampton’s Princess Anne Hospital but sadly passed away on August 28, 2014 after just 23 days with us.

It was a severe case of Necrotising Enterocolitis (NEC) that tragically claimed Toby’s life. NEC is the second most common cause of death in NICUs in the developed world. In the UK, around 3,000 babies a year develop this serious bowel problem and around one in three of these babies will die. Death from NEC may be as high as 30-50% in babies, who like Toby, have a birthweight of less than 1,500g.

We are looking to raise funds to support a research project being organised by CW+, the charity of Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. Lead by leading neonatologist Dr Enitan Ogundipe, this ground-breaking project will look into treating and eventually preventing the bowel condition. Research findings will be freely available for use by other academics and hospitals across the UK and indeed worldwide.

Details of CW+ research studies into NEC - that will explore the use of fatty acids to treat NEC and also ways to predict and prevent the condition - can be found at www.cwplus.org.uk/research/nec.

CW+ need £895,000 to make this life saving and life changing research happen - of which they have currently raised 35% of their target - meaning they need a further £560,000 by July 2016. Please spare whatever you can to help them reach this target. Sadly, it’s too late to save Tobylicious but this research will be key to the way babies with NEC are treated in the future. It will also hopefully be a big step to an eventual cure for this cruel condition that saw us lose our son.

Toby will always be loved from the bottom of our hearts and will never be forgotten. Thank you for your support.

Love Andy, Cathryn and the rest of Team Toby!