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Cork University Hospital (CUH) Charity’s Ambassador, Peter O’Mahony recently launched an urgent fundraising campaign to secure ground-breaking technology which will significantly advance cancer testing and improve cancer patient's quality of life and survival.
“The campaign is supported by the Fenton family in memory of their beautiful daughter and sister Karen who died of ovarian cancer, and they have raised €75,000 to date for the critical technology”, said O’Mahony, the Ireland and Munster rugby player, who is fronting this fundraising initiative.
“We still need to raise €275,000 needed to purchase this life-changing technology for cancer patients through our idonate page”, he added. “We want to save as many lives as we can, not to mention the improved quality of life offered by this ultra-modern diagnostic technology.”
BITA Cork Chair, Judy Hopkins ran the launch public relations, photography and videography campaign which so far has raised over €100,000. She even challenged the Munster/Irish rugby star (O’Mahony) to a tug of war aboard the Irish Naval Ship, the L.E. Eithne for her own challenge. She let him win of course; “we wouldn’t want to injure one of our stars now, would we?”
Finance Director at BITA Cork and recently appointed BITA Cork Global representative, Rachel O’Leary and over 50 of her colleagues across the O’Leary Insurances offices nationwide, also took part in a Lockdown Fitness Challenge involving walking, running or cycling over 7,500km over the first four weeks of the challenge, raising €4,500 in the process.
According to Clinical Director for Cancer Services, Dr. Richard Bambury, growth in cancer rates will continue to rise as the population lives longer, and as new cancers continue to emerge.
“CUH has seen 200 new patients in radiotherapy and 50 patients in chemotherapy in the last six weeks alone, demonstrating the seriousness of the situation and the necessity to provide a quick turnaround and halt progression of cancers. This is where this vital piece of equipment, the Ion Torrent Genexus Integrated Sequencer technology will be invaluable. With this new technology,
clinicians can get same day results instead of waiting two weeks, quickly select the treatments most likely to benefit individual patients, uncover novel treatment options and identify clinical trial possibilities. Saving lives is at the core of what we do, and the added advantage of valuable research will undoubtedly be hugely significant for future generations.” Dr. Bambury said.
Peter O’Mahony is asking people to come up with creative fundraising ideas for their social media fundraising campaign, have a bit of fun with it, and when they donate, they set themselves a challenge enabling friends, families, communities and companies to pull together to improve cancer services for future generations. It could be a sporting, art or household challenge (anything at all
- run around your garden, a Zoom party, a 5k walk, shave your head, a virtual tractor run!) to raise awareness and fundraising for this worthy initiative.
“Donate on idonate, do your challenge and tag as many friends as you would like to challenge using #PullTogetherCUHC and tagging @CUH.Charity on Instagram, ‘Cork University Hospital Charity’ on Facebook and @CUHCharity on Twitter, and let’s all pull together against cancer!” O’Mahony concludes.