Health & Wellbeing

Birmingham Children’s Hospital Charity has announced on International Rare Disease Day it has only £650,000 left to raise in its £3.65 million campaign to build the UK’s first Rare Diseases Centre for children. The Star Appeal, which launched in October 2015, has now hit the £3 million milestone meaning it is one step closer to making the dreams of thousands of young people living with a rare or undiagnosed condition come true.

A driver who lost a leg after sleepwalking to her car and crashing into a tree is set to take on the Morrisons Great Birmingham 10K in April to raise money for the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham Charity, to thank the ‘fantastic’ staff at the hospital that saved her.  Kelly Jackson, 28, spent three weeks in a coma at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham following the horrific crash near her home in Hall Green.

Two bereaved mums officially cut the ribbon on a brand-new £1million support centre called Magnolia House – a national first at Birmingham Children’s Hospital. Every year, approximately 120 life-changing conversations take place at the hospital between health professionals and the loved ones of young people. To help future families, mums Gayle Routledge, 45, from Stafford and Rachel Ollerenshaw, 46, from Warwick have worked together with the hospital’s dedicated bereavement specialists to make Magnolia House a reality.

Researchers at Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham are appealing for members of the local Muslim community to take part in a study on the effects different medications have on people with Type 2 diabetes who fast for Ramadan. During the month of Ramadan Muslims are required to fast from sunrise to sunset which, with the holy month falling in May and June this year, could mean up to 14 and a half hours without eating or drinking.

This April the prestigious Cancer Research UK Boat Races will see two additional boats take to the water. Two teams of celebrities will master the skills required to take on the River Thames in the first ever Cancer Research UK Celebrity Boat Race. The two teams, coached by Sir Steve Redgrave and James Cracknell OBE, are made up of a range of familiar faces including television personalities, presenters, comedians, ex-Olympians and former Oxford and Cambridge University Boat Club rowers.

The Little Princess Trust – a charity which provides free real-hair wigs for boys and girls suffering from hair loss – has teamed up with Shrek's Adventure! London to find a Real-Life Rapunzel! The Hereford-based charity, which has given away nearly 5,000 free real-hair wigs since its inception in 2006 to boys and girls suffering with cancer and other medical conditions, receives thousands of hair donations a year. These donations are used to make some of the real hair wigs given away. Normally, a minimum of 7 inches / 17cm is required.

Rick Stein, Tom Kitchin and Deliciously Ella are amongst the celebrity chefs to come together to encourage the nation to bake their favourite cake for Bowel Cancer UK’s fundraising campaign Be a Star, Bake a Cake.  This year Bowel Cancer UK, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary, is hoping more people than ever will hold a bake sale during Bowel Cancer Awareness Month in April and raise as much money as possible to help fund vital research and lifesaving work to stop bowel cancer.

Walkers who took part in Alzheimer’s Society’s Memory Walk at Cannon Hill Park in the autumn raised £332,972, the charity has revealed. 5000 people took part in the charity’s walk at the park on Sunday 11 September 2016, making it one of the biggest in the history of Alzheimer’s Society’s Memory Walks. Walkers from across the city tackled a scenic route around the park on a sunny Sunday in September. The charity had set the target fundraising figure of £280,000.

Struggling with your New Year's resolutions or thinking about getting fit for the summer? SHA Wellness Clinic have a comprehensive anti-smoking programme which will help you quit smoking, avoid cravings and manage stressful situations that can lead to relapse. A personalised programme is created to target the nicotine addiction profile of each guest, including pioneering treatments and wellness consultations with world renowned specialists and doctors.

A Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham (QEHB) cancer patient is urging people to sign up for the pioneering 100,000 Genomes Project. Toby Knight had surgery for colorectal cancer at QEHB in January 2014, followed by chemotherapy, and is now all clear of the disease. But before his operation he gave permission for a tumour sample to be kept for research – which has now led to him signing up to the ground-breaking NHS England initiative, the first of its kind in the world.

46-year-old Jason Green will ride the 75mile ‘Sunrise Express’ later this month to raise funds in support of his relative, 12-year-old Harry Price. Football mad Harry was diagnosed with Philadelphia positive Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia in October 2016 and is currently undergoing intensive and gruelling chemotherapy treatment for a condition that is more common in adults than children. Jason, an I.T. Infrastructure Engineer from Longbridge aims to raise £4,000 for blood cancer charity Cure Leukaemia to support the charity’s £1m Centre Appeal in 2017.

A leading Birmingham scientist has been awarded a grant worth almost £240,000 by research charity Breast Cancer Now to conduct pioneering research into a potential new role of BRCA1 mutations in the development of breast cancer. Faults in the ‘breast cancer gene’ BRCA1 – which provides instructions for cells to make the BRCA1 protein – can dramatically increase a person’s risk of developing breast cancer. Around 1 in 20 breast cancers develop as a result of a mutation in BRCA1 or its sister gene BRCA2, accounting for around 2,500 new cases of breast cancer each year in the UK.

An Aircraft Engineer who served in the Royal Airforce during the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts will join over one thousand others and cycle 100 miles in one day at Velo Birmingham, in aid of patients at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham. Jonathan Perks, a 42 year-old father of four, spent eight years as a Royal Airforce Engineer, where he was involved in preparing C130 Hercules – the workhorse of the RAF’s Air Transport, responsible for carrying troops, including flying those injured in conflict to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, where the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine is based – for medical evacuations during the war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Birmingham-based researchers have enlisted the expertise of a Midlands Air Ambulance Charity (MAAC) HEMS paramedic to help carry out a ground breaking study. Jim Hancox has been drafted into a NIHR Surgical Reconstruction and Microbiology Research Centre (SRMRC) team which is investigating the effectiveness of giving patients blood products after a major injury before reaching hospital.