Parents Raise Funds and Organise Heart Screenings in Memory of Son, Josh Fell

Hull Daily Mail, 11th May 2019

Richard and Donna Fell lost their 15 year old son, Josh, to sudden arrythmic death syndrome (SADS) eight years ago as he played in an after school football match. He had not been diagnosed with a heart condition previously. Since then his parents have kept his memory alive through raising awareness and funds for Cardiac Risk in the Young (CRY), raising over £160,000 for the charity. Their efforts have thus far enabled over 1,700 young people to receive free heart screenings. They hope to get free cardiac screenings in all schools across the UK. “If we’d have had a chance like these cardiac screenings to get Josh checked, it’s most likely that he would still be here with us today, as it’s a 30-second ECG which is painless and could find an underlying heart problem 99 per cent of the time,” said Richard. “You can’t put a cost on life and if it had been in schools when Josh was alive he might still be here, so we keep campaigning to the government that screenings needs to be in schools as standard practice.”

This weekend marks their tenth free heart screening event. “These are our tenth screenings in memory of Josh which are held over two days this weekend, and the fact that the screenings have been continuing for so long is pretty remarkable really,” said Richard. “We expect 200 people between the ages of 14 and 35 to come and have an ECG screening. By the end of this weekend we will have had 1,723 people aged 14-35 screened in memory of Josh. Around one in 30 people will have a heart condition, so in theory we will have helped between five and six people to detect a heart problem through these screenings.” Read More