You may be asking who is Ernest Sterzer.

You may also be asking what is Type 1 Diabetes?

Take 5 minutes to read this story. Then watch the video by clicking the black thumbnail in the gallery underneath this page. Even if you don't read this -- watch the video and think about it before leaving without making a donation.

I'll start with Type 1 Diabetes. It is an autoimmune condition. This is a condition where for some reason or another your body's immune system decides that something which the body actually needs....is actually a bad thing. And decides to shut it down. This is massively simplified but essentially type 1 is where the body decides for some reason, that the pancreas is bad and decides to turn it off by killing the cells which produce insulin. Insulin in a very simplified explanation carries sugar metabolized from all types of foods into our muscles, to fuel our energy and keep us running.

When Type 1 turns off that pancreas, the exceptionally clever hormone - Insulin - whose job is to extract sugars from our blood and carry them into the muscle disappears. This in turn means sugar levels in the blood climb dangerously high. If left untreated it results in Ketoacidosis which is essentially a form of poison which then can cause other organs to shut down. There are hundreds of long term health effects of raised blood sugar levels ranging from blindness, amputations through to the entire suite of cardiovascular problems. Equally blood sugars can go too low when it is not regulated by the exceptionally clever organ - the pancreas. When this happens and is left untreated a coma is quickly followed by death.

The brave people with type 1 have to self manage their insulin delivery through special Insulin Pens which offer injections which correlate to the amount of food they intake, or insulin pumps, which is a newer more effective form of treatment. However these incredible people often under the age of 10 did nothing wrong. They did not ask for it, and they could have done nothing to avoid it. They inject at least 6 times a day in order to stay alive, and test their blood over 10 times a day to maintain a safe level of sugar in the blood. It's ironically really not a sweet battle to fight.

JDRF's mission is to find a cure. Find the trigger which causes the immune system to plan an attack on something so important in the body and shut that attack down. When JDRF succeeds in it's mission - the host of other autoimmune conditions and their research based charities are then armed with a massive surge in hope, and medical success. The millions which have type 1, who live very different lives to you or I will celebrate with us in the incredible achievement.

OK - so - you now know a bit more about Type 1 Diabetes. Now onto Ernest Sterzer. The story of Ernest starts before WW2. He was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at age 3. Coupled with a very early understanding of type 1 he was treated with basic healthcare and Cattle Insulin that people today would be horrified at. When WW2 and its havoc broke loose around Austria in 1938 he was taken to concentration camps and separated from any form of stability and of course - Insulin. Its obvious that somebody in this situation is now on the edge of life or death. Insulin was barely accessible before the war and in a concentration camp it was near impossible for a young boy to get his hands on the hormone injection required each day to metabolize food into energy. Faced with type 1, and concentration camps, somehow Ernest was still alive in 1945 when the war ended. Emigrating to New York - USA he retells his story in great detail here : http://www.dlife.com/diabetes/export/pics/dLife_Images/Show_pages/219-Ernest-Sterzer-account.pdf 

Ernest was a hero - how he lived is a genuine miracle when you read what he faced. Every single person in the UK - all 400,000 of them suffering from type 1 are heroes. Type 1 diabetes is on the rise and is a condition which targets children more commonly than adults. Let's rid the world of this condition, and honor Ernest's heroic fight in doing so. 

Money will be the difference between a cure in the next 10 years or a cure in the next 1000. Play your role here and now with generosity knowing that even the smallest offering will put a smile a mile wide on my face, Ernest's and all of these heroes that pass us by on the streets every day silently battling something so incredibly difficult to live with.