A medical research foundation for Crumlin Children's Hospital has issued a fundraising appeal for €20 million.
The Children’s Medical Research Foundation (CMRF) in Crumlin announced on Wednesday it raised €15m between the start of 2016 and April 2017. The funds were raised from corporate, voluntary groups and public donations.
The group invested €4.3m of the funds into seven new pilot paediatric research projects examining childhood illnesses. The projects are run by the National Children’s Research Centre (NCRC).
The group’s annual report said if fundraising levels cannot be maintained by the foundation in coming years “the life-changing and ground breaking projects underway at the NCRC will be put in jeopardy”.
The medical foundation also invested €8m into children’s medical services, and €3.7m in funding was providing to Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital Crumlin for cancer and cardiac arrest equipment.
The foundaition’s chief executive Lisa-Nicole Dunne said the need to fund forward thinking reserach was vital, as well as the need to support “sick children and their families at traumatic times”.
Speaking at the launch of the its annual report she said that “with statistics like one in 100 children born with a structural heart defect in Ireland, 5,000 children in Ireland estimated to have juvenile arthritis, one in 19 in Ireland carrying the Cystic Fibrosis gene, there is a lot more to do and we cannot stop now.”
The charity group is more than 50 years old, and in the past decade has raised more than €87m to invest in medical care for children.
