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To increase the funds (currently 3%) in childhood cancer research

Sophie’s wish was to make chemo easier. It is so hard to ever truly explain how horrific it is to see the impact chemotherapy and radiotherapy has on your child. The treatment is designed for adults but given to children. This is why if children do survive they are left with lifelong issues as a result of their treatment. This isn’t spoken enough as most people see the persons hair come back and in remission yet they have health or psychological issues as a result of their treatment. This cannot be deemed a success or cure! You might have cured the cancer but left the child with health issues instead. Had Sophie survived the list of issues she would have had is long – she had radiotherapy to her whole abdomen and this did extensive damage to organs which were healthy prior to her treatment.

 

The reason why there has been no advances to treatment for cancers like Sophie’s is due to funding – the lack of it! There is not enough researchers or scientists taking an interest in childhood cancer – the majority tend to go into adults cancer. We need to raise the profile of childhood cancer and incentives to find new treatments so children like Sophie aren’t left to either die or a lifelong of health issues.

 

We are asking the government to create a Childhood Cancer Mission. It will bring together scientists, researchers, philanthropist, oncologists, parents, childhood cancer survivors and they can all start finding ways to change the future for these innocent children. Children do not get cancer because of their lifestyle or environmental factors yet they get the least amount of funding. Children also have the most years left to live and we should be giving them some priority to find new innovative treatment. All of this costs money and therefore we would like far more funds allocated to children’s cancer.

 

Sophie’s Legacy managed to secure the first ever debate in the House of Commons on 26th April 2022 thanks to our MP Caroline Dineage. It received cross party support with 22 MPs sharing stories of their constituents whose children were either in remission or sadly died from cancer. We were disappointed by the response from the Health Minister Maria Caulfield. We are continuing our campaign for the government to implement the childhood cancer mission. We have further meetings with the Health Minister and Health Secretary.

 

We have been asking the public to write to their MP and demand for changes – I really believe we can create this change if we keep pushing the government.

 

Our children deserve so much more, more research, more funding, and a chance at being cured without lifelong problems.