This week is The Big Give Christmas Challenge, which is the UK’s biggest match funding campaign. What this means is that any donations made via the Big Give’s website up until 12 noon on Tuesday 8 December will be doubled. You can see the impact this will have on our patients in the video below. 

Already we have been overwhelmed with how generous our supporters have been. Every donation made makes a real difference to our hospitals’ patients and the money given this week will go towards saving lives.

As this is a vital week for fundraising, we wanted to highlight some generous supporters who have done fantastic feats of fundraising for the Charity recently. Today we are focusing on Lawrence Wiffin whose life was saved by Royal Brompton Hospital ten years ago.

This November Lawrence completed an incredible fundraising challenge. For the 10 days, from Friday 6 November until Sunday 15 November, Lawrence ran a 10k run every day to mark 10 years since he had lifesaving open heart surgery at Royal Brompton Hospital. That’s 10, 10ks in 10 days 10 years on.

 “I am forever grateful to the wonderful staff at the Brompton and if it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t have gone on to have three healthy wonderful sons,” Lawrence said.

He added: “Next month marks 10 years since I underwent life-changing surgery at the Royal Brompton Hospital to correct a hole in my heart, which was discovered at the age of 24. As a lad I always loved my sports but was never the fittest. I’ve since learned my heart was actually working overtime and chances are, if this defect wasn’t discovered I probably wouldn’t be here now.”

All throughout this year we have been raising funds to buy new imaging equipment for both Royal Brompton and Harefield Hospitals. These new state-of-the-art scanners will provide our NHS colleagues with more detailed images of patients at lower radiation levels. Thank you to Lawrence for making an important contribution to getting the hospitals the equipment they desperately need.

It wouldn’t be possible to raise the funds for this without generous supporters like Lawrence who run, bake, sing or craft to raise money for Royal Brompton and Harefield Hospitals. This Big Give week we wanted to say a big thank you to everyone who has fundraised for the hospitals. Your support has been amazing.

If you donate to the Big Give Christmas challenge up until 12 noon on Tuesday 8 December, then your donation will be doubled. Donate now at the link below.

Donate to the Big Give Christmas Challenge here