RACECOURSES AIM TO RAISE £15,000 FOR GREAT ORMOND STREET HOSPITAL CHILDREN'S CHARITY

Mon, Mar 8, 2010

ONE of Britain's largest racecourse groups is targeting £15,000 to allow Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity to purchase a new kidney dialysis machine to save the lives of more seriously ill children at the hospital.

Everyone who buys a ticket online to one of the ten racecourses that Northern Racing owns or manages between now and the end of the year will be invited to make a £1 donation.

The money is being raised under the auspices of the Reuben Foundation which was founded eight years by the Reuben Brothers, the major shareholders in Northern Racing.

Tony Kelly, Group Managing Director of Northern Racing, said: "We are delighted to be helping to raise funds for this remarkable cause. It will require the support of just a small number of people visiting our racecourses and buying their tickets online to meet our target and help save the lives of more children."

London's Great Ormond Street Hospital, the largest paediatric renal centre in the UK as well as the country's largest centre for renal transplantation and one of the largest in the world, has been treating children with kidney disease since 1975.

The hospital cares for about one in five children in the UK who suffer from a life-limiting kidney condition, from premature babies to late teens.

Life for a child waiting for a transplant or one for whom a transplant is not suitable, is not easy. ‘Continuous Veno-Venous Haemofiltration' (CVVH) machines take the blood from the patient, clean it and reissue it to the patient.

A spokesman for Great Ormond Street Hospital said: "There is currently no cure for chronic kidney disease. However, thanks to medical advances here at Great Ormond Street Hospital, particularly in safer dialysis and transplantation, children who would otherwise have died from kidney failure are now reaching adulthood.

"We need to purchase new CVVH machines in order to make the unpleasant experience of dialysis as effective and beneficial for our young patients as we possibly can.

"We are currently aiming to buy five such new machines so if Northern Racing and followers of horse racing can raise £15,000 in 2010, we can fully fund one of these vital devices."

Northern Racing Ltd
Northern Racing owns nine of Britain's 60 racecourses and manages another - Ffos Las in west Wales. They are: Bath, Brighton, Chepstow, Fontwell Park, Great Yarmouth, Hereford, Newcastle, Sedgefield and Uttoxeter.

The Reuben Foundation
Formed in 2002, the Reuben Foundation is a UK-registered foundation created to channel the charitable giving of the Reuben Brothers. The brothers continue to look proactively at supporting a range of charitable causes, from long-term funding projects to individual charitable donations.

Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity
Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity needs to raise £50 million a year to help rebuild and refurbish Great Ormond Street Hospital, provide vital up-to-date equipment and fund research into better treatments for the children. You can help us to provide world class care for our patients and families. www.gosh.org


For further information, please contact:
Melissa Page, Marketing Manager, at Northern Racing on 01283 575818

Author:  M Page

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