Paul O'Gorman Lifeline

01 February 2000

A researcher with two smiling Hispanic children

Since 1996 we have been working with a charity now called Paul O’Gorman Lifeline which helps to provide treatment for children from eastern Europe and central Asia with life-threatening illnesses.

Treatments for cancer are expensive and many poorer countries simply do not have the means to provide them. Countries in eastern Europe and central Asia do not have the facilities or the finances to provide the treatments which are available in developed countries.

Treatments for cancer are expensive and many poorer countries simply do not have the means to provide them.

This means that children are dying of a disease which is potentially curable.

Three quarters of children diagnosed with cancer in the UK and other affluent countries now survive, but the outlook for their counterparts in less affluent countries is still very bleak.

Many of Lifeline’s patients have leukaemia and often need a bone marrow transplant, a difficult and expensive procedure which is simply not available in their own countries.

Lifeline also works with a large number of bone cancer patients from Kyrgystan. In the West we have made tremendous progress in treating children with bone cancer and limb-sparing surgery is routinely performed. In Kyrgystan all children undergo amputation yet they still die due to lack of adequate chemotherapy.

We contribute £750,000 every year to help fund this life-saving work.

Over the years Lifeline has provided help and assistance to many desperately ill children. Most of the children referred for treatment now go to Italy, where treatment is available at a lower cost than in the UK. But even in Italy, the medical costs of treating a single child may be as much as £85,000. Travel and accommodation expenses push this up further.

We contribute £750,000 every year to help fund this life-saving work.

The children helped by Lifeline really represent the tip of the iceberg. But Lifeline works on the principle that each life is worth saving and they take it one life at a time.

Visit the Paul O’Gorman Lifeline website

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