Why help? Obvious

The Brain and Spine Foundation is secure. It has been working efficiently for over 20 years and has a proven track record of high quality research, training and patient support.

Did you know that the new Professor of Neurosurgery at no lesser institution than Cambridge University, was started in research by the BSF. Thousands survive because of his and other BSF research. Schumacher will hopefully live to count himself amongst them.

The brain and its spine is the most complex and precious structure yet discovered anywhere in the known universe. A human brain has one trillion neurons each with one million connections. That is more possible combinations than there are atoms in the universe? 

More worryingly it is also our most fragile possession. Did you know that more people die or are disabled by neurological disorders than either heart disease or cancer? And no one is safe.

 

From cerebral palsy and spina bifida in babies to brain tumours and meningitis in children, to epilepsy and head injury in teenagers to brain haemorrhage, motor neurone disease and multiple sclerosis in young adults to stroke and dementia in older adults, it affects us all.

 

More worryingly still is just how much we are going to need the Brain and Spine Foundation. Though taken together the neurological disorders are more common than any other condition, including heart disease or cancer, the number of specialist units and specialists devoted to the field is lower in Britain than any other developed nation on the planet. Of over 700 hospitals fewer than 30 have a specialist unit with neurosurgeons able to save you. There are no neurosurgeons in the whole of Kent, Cornwall, Wales north of Cardiff (for those of you who don’t do Geography Cardiff is on the south coast!), Herefordshire, Hertfordshire, Berkshire. If you do a Schumacher in Dover, Brighton, Maidstone, Sevenoaks, Bassingstoke, Tunbridge, Saint Albans or Watford, good luck and here is the Brain and Spine Foundation’s telephone helpline – 08088081000.  You should try to remember it. Did you know that fewer than 5% of headinjury victims seriously injured enough to require admission to hospital or brain scanning ever see a specialist. Did you know that in this country, presumably because brain and bone both begin with the letter B, 95% of head injuries are cared for by orthopaedic instead of brain surgeons? And you don’t have to be a brain surgeon to know that is bad. The Foundation makes it better. They have specialist nurses trained to help and made only by your support.   

 

But more important to me than all this is my own story. In my village five young children have just lost their mother to a brain tumour, one family cares for their daughter permanently disabled by a head injury, dementia is darkening the life of several neighbors’ but one fantastically has had his life saved by neurosurgery to release a blood clot on the brain and another freed from intense pain by spinal surgery. One of my best friends lost his dad to a stroke. My baby cousin, Maria, died of a disorder that stopped her brain developing. 

 

When I was a young boy I helped my father fund raising. He he and his patient, the injured boxer Michael Watson, along with his carer Lenny, walked the London marathon for the Brain and Spine Foundation. It took them six days and I swore when I was old enough I would run it; in the words of Michael, “for the benefit of others less fortunate than me”.

 

Now, I am pretty confident that I am faster than my dad but I need your to help to raise more money.

 

If you can read this you are indeed more fortunate than those your contribution will help. So please give generously!