Your generosity brings the VIP Treatment to the QE
QEHB Charity’s VIP Treatment Appeal was launched in November 2013 in order to create a child-orientated area in the radiotherapy department. The charity had a fundraising goal of £250,000.
Around 3,600 children and young people are diagnosed with cancer every year in the UK.
One child in every 500 will develop some form of cancer by the age of 14 years.
Every year, hundreds of children come to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham for courses of radiotherapy, which entail the children coming to the hospital five days every week for six weeks. This is incredibly gruelling for people of any age; what makes it worse for the young patients coming for radiotherapy is that they have to be anaesthetised to ensure they do not move during their treatment. This means that the children wake up disorientated and frightened, as they will be more used to the bright interiors of children’s hospitals as opposed to the adult atmosphere of the QE.
This is where your amazing support came to the fore. Thanks to such generosity, the week beginning 12th October 2015 will see the beginning of the refurbishment of the radiotherapy department. With your help, QEHB Charity is now able to provide the following:
- Redesigning the waiting area and reception area
- Creating a new children’s play area, where young patients can meet others going through the same experiences as them
- Creating a parent’s area next to the play area
- A consultation room where parents can discuss their child’s treatment in a confidential and comfortable environment
- A recovery room for young patients to recover after their anaesthetic
The recovery room will be especially important for helping our young patients. Next to the main radiotherapy suite, it will have colourful walls, soft lighting and music to calm the children as they awake from the anaesthetic.
To reward the children for their immense bravery, at the end of their course of radiotherapy each child receives a toy from QEHB Charity.
Your generosity has enabled us at QEHB Charity to give every child with cancer coming to the radiotherapy department the VIP Treatment. We want to give our deepest thanks to each and every one of you who helped this idea become a reality.
