Happy New Year and thank you to all of you who helped to make 2019 a very good year for the Charity through donations large and small. Perhaps you ran in the Harefield Fun Run, took part in a Bake Off, ran a half marathon or hosted a pub quiz. Your contribution to the Charity has helped our two amazing hospitals in important ways.

Just before Christmas, we bought our first ECMO machine, thanks to your donations and those who attended our Royal Brompton Carols by Candlelight. It was the most amazing carol concert with Zoe Wanamaker, Ronnie Wood and the other wonderful readers who made this year’s concert the best ever (and it raised a lot of money – well done to one and all!) 

We have completed our Cystic Fibrosis Appeal which supports the ambition to enable our cystic fibrosis patients to live more independent lives, in control of their condition – still cared for by the specialist team at Royal Brompton but also able to self-monitor and communicate with the experts from wherever they are.

We have broken the target for our Harefield Transplant Appeal to buy Organ Care Systems for heart transplants... Twice! And our donors continue to give generously knowing that every time one of these machines is used, a life is saved.

We have struggled a bit with our Transforming Your Care Appeal. It is a really vital piece of technology which will link patients to nurses and doctors in a way which will save huge amounts of time and allow for care to be given at the right time and in the right place, but technology is difficult to see, unlike ECMO and OCS. However, just before Christmas an amazing Charitable Trust gave the final £100k which took us roaring up to our target – thank you so much to them for that.

So, what does 2020 have in store for us? Well the appeals will unfold. We haven’t yet bought our promised second ECMO machine but hope to do that by March, thanks to our fantastic donors. We are fundraising for a physiotherapist who helps babies and older children with their breathing and movement when they are struggling with respiratory diseases – including cystic fibrosis. Why isn’t this funded by the NHS? Well good question. But it isn’t and she is a fantastic support to these children, so the Charity is proud to be stepping in to help. And heart transplants will always need OCS machines, so although there will be new appeals for Harefield, we will still always be fundraising for this amazing piece of equipment which enables the retrieval team to rescue organs from further away, so we can bring in more organs and take more patients off the waiting list.

Thank you for everything you do to support us – and please stay with us for 2020 – we can’t do this without you. Happy New Year!