Support Answers for Kids Cancer and Help Eliminate Childhood Cancer in Australia
On behalf of the Steven Walter Foundation, it is with great pleasure I invite you to support ‘Answers for Kids Cancer’. This is the first program of its kind in Australia and its goals are to improve survival rates for children with cancer and reduce the side effects of treatment.
The Steven Walter Foundation raises funds to support childhood cancer research at the Children’s Cancer Institute Australia (CCIA) and the Cancer Centre at Sydney Children’s Hospital. The Foundation was established in 2008 in the name of Steven Walter, who was diagnosed with cancer when he was 11 years old and fought the disease for 8 years. Steven requested that money be raised for research and support of children with cancer “so that one day no other kid will have to go through what I’ve been through”.
While children continue to face painful and traumatic treatments, amongst childhood illness, cancer remains the most common cause of death. Over the past 30 years tremendous advances have been made in the fight against childhood cancer, which has raised the survival rate for children with cancer to over 70%. However this still means 30% of children diagnosed with cancer don’t survive.
The goal of Answers for Kids Cancer is to target those children who do not survive. This program is a vital pipeline between the world class research capabilities of CCIA and the clinical expertise of the Cancer Centre at the Sydney Children’s Hospital.
Your donation to Answers for Kids Cancer will support the rapid progress of discoveries made in the laboratory directly to benefit patients. We need your help to fund the expensive process of pre-clinical drug testing and early phase clinical trials and to develop new and more sensitive tests to asses a child’s response to treatment.
CCIA reserchers have been highly successful in identifying drug candidates which can distinguish between cancer and normal cells in children and now have several new cancer treatments in early development. The Answers for Kids Cancer program will ensure that new laboratory discoveries are rapidly brought to the clinic to treat children who urgently need them.
An outstanding example of the power of doctors and scientists working together is a national clinical trial where children being treated for acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, the commonest childhood cancer, are having their treatment guided by a highly sensitive genetic test for relapse risk. In less than five years this study has already led to dramatically improved survival rates for children – a truly remarkable outcome.
We need your help to support Answers for Kids Cancer and give hope to our greatest asset, our children. The Steven Walter Foundation is seeking to raise more than $1,000,000 for the Answers for Kids Cancer Program at CCIA and Sydney Children’s Hospital.
Ultimately, Answers for Kids Cancer will mean that every Australia child with cancer will be offered the chance of a healthy life. With your support, we believe we can one day eliminate childhood cancer in Australia, and we invite you to share this journey with us.
Warm Regards,
The Steven Walter Foundation
PO Box 4610
Sylvania Waters, NSW, 2224
Australia
P: +61 2 8208 8863
F: +61 2 9545 2181
