Tom and Claire
Claire wanted to raise £100,000 for CRY in Tom’s memory – and we asked you if you’d help to achieve that in memory of both Tom and Claire.
You’ve done that and more.
As of this morning, donations to what is now Tom and Claire’s Fund stand in excess of £110,000 since we first began fund-raising in 2008. There is still more money coming in.
All we can say is a huge “THANK YOU”.
Our focus will remain on working with CRY to provide free heart screenings for young people in west London. Our belief – Claire’s belief – is that screening can make a difference.
It can help to challenge a dreadful statistic – that 12 young people aged 14-35, like Tom, die each week from an undiagnosed heart condition.
Since we lost Tom in 2007, CRY’s figures suggest a further 4,500 young people will have died. The vast majority could have been saved with a simple test:
- One in every 300 that CRY tests – and CRY has tested more than 70,000 young people – will be identified with a potentially life threatening condition.
- One in every 100 will have a condition that is less serious but could cause problems in later life.
Like other health screening programmes, it can’t yet identify all those at risk. But in Italy, where screening is mandatory for all young people engaged in organised sport, they have reduced the incidence of young sudden cardiac death by 89%.
To read more on the latest research, click here.
But for now, all we’d like to say once again is a huge “THANK YOU”.
Paul and Ellen x
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