2009 Message from Ron White,
Breakspear Hospital Trust Chairman

We have held two appeals in the Breakspear Medical Bulletin. We had a very encouraging response and I hope we thanked each of you who contributed at the time, and thank you again for all the help.

Most of the money raised has been either spent on or earmarked for patients unable to afford treatment for their allergies. We have unfortunately had to decline some requests for help because we have to prioritise and only the more extreme cases receive grants. At present, this is restricted to those unable to work at all due to illness and generally precludes those with a working partner or, in the case of minors, a working parent. We’d like to have less stringent qualification requirements but that is contingent upon raising more money. Helping patients remains a top priority!

We would also like to expand our activities to encompass the other objectives as shown above.

Education is becoming ever more important as all doctors are now required to have regular training updates on their specialisations. We believe we could play a part in fostering this training in the field of allergy, as at present knowledge of the subject and training in its diagnosis and treatment are woefully inadequate.

The 2007 House of Lords report on allergy pointed out some of the shortcomings in NHS allergy services and made some sensible recommendations; not surprisingly, yet disappointingly, we’ve seen little progress since then; we see it as part of our job to keep up the pressure by continuing to draw public attention to the issue via the media and lobbying. We have access, both at Breakspear Hospital and elsewhere, to some of the top medical specialists in allergy and environmental illness and we see a need to use this expertise and to fund some small pilot studies concerning the efficacy of treatments, which could lead to larger scale work by other medical research establishments.

Our eventual objective would be for full and effective treatments for allergy to be made available within the NHS to everyone who needs them. Realistically this is not likely to happen anytime soon, however with application we believe a little momentum could be added.

We are making a difference, but this can continue only with the help of donors. So if you are able to help us, we, and more particularly those we help, will be most grateful.