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 On
a hot Monday in July the Honorary President of our Centre for Sports Cardiology,
Ian Botham, somehow found the time in his frenetic schedule to squeeze in a
visit to Westminster and launch a hugely important event for CRY - the
instigation of an All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for cardiac risk in the
young. This anchored the
culmination of a journey whose passage began in 1997 after I was contacted by
Adrian Woodhead shortly after his wife Sarah had died suddenly in his arms aged
28. Sarah's nausea and fainting had
been dismissed as symptoms of the pregnancy that they were both so hoping for.
The reality was that Sarah was suffering from cardiomyopathy, the
condition that had killed her mother, just after she had been born.
Adrian vowed that in memory of Sarah his goal would be to target change
through government and his MP Julian Lewis pledged his support for our campaign.
Last year Julian was finally successful in his application for an
Adjournment Debate on cardiac risk in the young and the Minister of Health
Yvette Cooper responded in the House, to his appeal.
 After
attending our Parliamentary Reception in April, Jeff Morland's MP Kevan Jones
discussed with Julian the potential for co-ordinating an All Party Parliamentary
Group - our ultimate goal - and this reached fruition in July.
In his speech to galvanise MP's support Ian emphasised his determination
to see changes made telling MP's "at the end of the day these deaths are
indiscriminate. They affect all
sorts of people - amateur sportsmen, professional sportsmen, a guy playing on a
pitch, a kid at school sports day. It
is something that must be addressed and has been swept under the carpet for too
long." For a charity such as
CRY to have an APPG is a fantastic achievement and gives us an opportunity to
have a voice and influence in the corridors of power - the place where decisions
are made, and I am most grateful to Adrian and Jeff for all the work they have
done with MP’s to make this happen.
We
have had 4 major national media articles since our Spring newsletter, in the
Sunday Times, The Times, PE Sport and The Paramedic a magazine which is
circulated to every paramedic in the country.
Consequently although the summer holidays is usually a quiet time in the
CRY office giving us a much longed for opportunity to catch-up, we have instead
been fielding hundreds of enquiries for our screening programme, which with
Staff holiday breaks has kept us working at our usual breakneck pace!
John
Inverdale took timeout from his hectic schedule during The Championships at
Wimbledon to accept a cheque in the Wimbledon Museum on behalf of CRY
from his friend Mark Loveday. Mark
had raised an astonishing £15,000 by running with friends at the London
Marathon in memory of his baby son who had died suddenly last year.
The last time I had seen John was when he was participating in our very
successful tennis pro-am at Sutton Tennis Club, and he expressed a particular
interest in CRY's programme particularly in relation to sport.
Another important step in raising awareness amongst medics has been made
by Doreen Harley who has been working for some time with the Flintshire local
health group who have distributed CRY's literature to the 26 area GP practices.
All Cardiologists serving the 3 main hospitals for North Wales and
Chester are going to be included in this initiative that it is hoped will now be
extended to  other
GP surgeries in North Wales.
Our
very important, and long awaited, ECG Testing programme in the Western Isles has
now been concluded, a project that has taken two and a half years to complete.
Introducing ECG testing to the Hebridean Island of Lewes has not only
given us the opportunity to check the cardiac health of the Island's schoolchildren
but also to raise awareness of CRY's programme North of the Border with a number
of newspaper articles, radio and TV interviews.
The testing was in memory of Joanne Fotheringham whose Headmaster George
Moody offered to be the volunteer administrator of this event that will yield important research on the efficacy of
ECG testing amongst adolescents. George
was able to bring his immense experience and understanding of local problems to
the organisation of the ECG testing programme, and secure the interest and
co-operation of all relevant parties. Organising
any screening event is challenging and time consuming
- managing an event on a
remote Island in the farthest reaches of the UK was an accomplishment challenge
that CRY can be very proud of. Photo: Dr Sanjay Sharma - during
beach break
The
Genetics Knowledge Park is an alliance between a dozen NHS Hospitals and Medical
Schools in London, and they have organised a conference on Genetics, Human
Health and Disease and asked our Patron Professor McKenna to invite CRY to
attend as one of a number of specialist support groups.
This will be held at the Natural History Museum, London on Saturday
November 30 and is for anybody who wants to know about genetics. A flyer on the
conference is included with this Update.
I
am also delighted to have been asked to speak at The Athletes Heart Symposium on
"the impact of sudden cardiac death - the case for screening" to be
held at University College London, on December 17.
This symposium is on day one of a 4-day meeting of the UK Physiological
Society and includes a galaxy of famous names in the world of sports cardiology
including many of those familiar to CRY supporters -
Professor Bill McKenna, Professor Paul Thompson (USA), Dr Dominico
Corrado (Italy), Dr Len Shapiro, and Dr Sanjay Sharma.
In
conclusion it is interesting to note that at the beginning of 2002 we made what
we thought was an ambitious decision to print 10,000 of both our new General and
Parliamentary Leaflets - an order that was conscientiously calculated to be
sufficient to last the entire year. Astonishingly
within 3 months supplies were exhausted and we had to urgently reorder another
print run of 10,000! This is now exhausted and we have again reordered 10,000!
It is by such barometers that we can measure the pace at which CRY's
campaign message is being promulgated.
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