NEWS RELEASE
17 May 2004
Mother Asks For People To Run For Charity Louise McCulloch of Houghton-le-Spring is preparing to run the Great North Run in aid of the charity that has supported her family throughout her child’s illness and she is urging others to do the same.
Mrs McCulloch and her husband, Wayne, will be taking part in the Great North Run on Sunday 26th September in aid of the Children’s Liver Disease Foundation. CLDF is a unique national charity that fights childhood liver diseases through funding pioneering research and educating healthcare professionals and the general public. It provides professional, emotional support to families affected and is the only organisation of its kind in the UK.
Louise and Wayne decided to run for the Foundation after discovering that their daughter Frankie, eight months, was born with biliary atresia, a rare condition in which the bile ducts in the liver become progressively blocked, leading to irreversible liver damage. At just eight weeks old Frankie had to undergo a Kasai operation, which involves making a drainage channel to allow bile to drain from the liver.
Louise said: "From the time of diagnosis up until she went into hospital I just kept asking myself why us, what did we do wrong? I was in total shock. Frankie being ill has had a great strain on the family and I have been unable to return to work due to stress. The Foundation has been fantastic throughout and has provided us with information about Frankie’s condition that as helped us understand more. We now know that we did not do anything wrong. Biliary atresia affects 1 in every 14,000 births and, sadly, Frankie is part of that statistic. Through our involvement with the Foundation we have found comfort in knowing there are other people in the same situation and that the Foundation’s support team is always there if we need help."
This is the first time that Louise has run a marathon; she continues "I’d been thinking about doing the Great North Run for a few years as I like to run anyway. Having Frankie has just spurred me on. I’d like to encourage other people to run on behalf of the Foundation, it really is a worthy cause. Most people don’t even realise that children get liver disease and yet one in every 2,700 newborn babies will have liver disease. We all have an equal chance of it been our child or the child of somebody we know."
Catherine Arkley chief executive of the Foundation said: "We really appreciate the McCullochs running on our behalf. Not many people realise that at least two children are diagnosed every day with a liver disease and these are just the ones that we know about. There are over 100 different liver diseases. Childhood liver diseases are very different from adult liver diseases. There are many causes ~ genetic, infection, congenital, metabolic etc. But for the vast majority we simply do not know why they occur. It is only through the help of supporters that we can continue to fund research into why children like Frankie get liver disease."
CLDF do have places still available for the Great North Run if you are interested in taking part on the Foundations behalf please call 0121 2123839. The Foundation does ask that runners can guarantee to raise a minimum of £200 in sponsorship money.
Ends
For more information on this story please contact Rebecca O’Connor on 0121 212 6012 or e-mail rebeccaOC@childliverdisease.org
