Strangers Dig Deep to Give 2 Yr Old £600k ($960k) for Christmas

News provided by

Shareagift.com

18 Dec, 2012, 09:35 GMT

LONDON, December 18, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

  • 2 yr old needs £600k ($960k) for life-saving treatment
  • Thousands of strangers donate to http://www.shareagift.com/jack
  • 7 Shareagift pages for the treatment collected over £45k ($74k) so far
  • One-off donor offered to match Shareagift Pages amount
  • Charity behind the trial now have over £145k ($230k) towards their goal

Thousands of strangers from around the world are digging into their pockets this Christmas to give £600k ($960k) to save the life of a 2 year old boy and others like him.

Jack Baird, from Sunderland in the north of England, suffers from Sanfilippo disease - a rare fatal childhood disease that will gradually destroy his physical and mental ability, leading to his death in childhood.

There is a treatment for the disease but it needs a clinical trial in the UK before it can be made available for Jack and others like him.  The trial costs £600k (£960k) and has been refused public funding by the British Medical Council as it only affects around 130 children in the country.

But now there's hope. Jack's mum and the families of 6 other children suffering from the disease set up online pages on group gifting site Shareagift.com to ask for public support and the response has been phenomenal. So far together their pages have collected over £46,000 ($74,000) from over 1,000 members of the public, strangers who have been touched by their situation, sharing the pages virally across the internet.

The MPS Society, the charity raising funds for the clinical trial have since reported an astonishing outpouring of support from other initiatives - in total the charity have collected over £145,000 ($230,000) towards the trials so are well on the way to reaching their target. One incredibly generous donor matched the public donations raised on the children's Shareagift Pages in November in a hugely generous one-off donation of £25,000 ($40,000).

To contribute towards Jack's page please go to http://www.shareagift.com/jack. To see all the children's pages please go to Shareagift.com and search for MPS Children.

For further information about the MPS Society please visit http://www.mpssociety.co.uk

Contact:
Tessa Pettman
tessa@shareagift.com
+44(0)20-32041130