A family is drawing up a schedule for their next round of fundraising after handing over new equipment to a doctor’s surgery for the use by thousands of patients.

Robi and Kate Fox, from Woodbridge, and their children Mark and Sam have been helped by the community to raise £12,000 for the charity Cardiac Risk in the Young (CRY). 

They have spent £5,000 buying an electrocardiogram testing machine (ECG) to be used by practice nurse Jill White and doctors at the surgery in St John’s Street, Woodbridge.

The rest of the funds will be used by the charity for various initiatives, including the support of medical research into cardiac abnormalities.

But the family was determined to keep on raising money in the hope their efforts will prevent someone else dying from sudden death syndrome, an umbrella term used for the many different causes of cardiac arrest in young people.  The machine has an inscription saying it is in memory of the couple’s daughter Laura, who was aged 13 when she died unexpectedly in August 1998.

The Farlingaye High School pupil had a rare condition called cardiac arrhythmia.

There was no national testing for the condition, but now youngsters throughout east Suffolk will benefit from the ECG machine.

PC Fox, a Suffolk Constabulary air observer, said yesterday: “Our plan is to have local screening for sports clubs and we hope to go into Ipswich Town youth academy in the future.