Kilimanjaro for Cancer: Kilimanjaro on a Treadmill

Saturday, 14 May 2016

Kilimanjaro on a Treadmill

In a moment of madness I came up with a fundraising idea to climb the height of Kilimanjaro on a treadmill as part of my training for the real thing in September! Well, now it's going to happen, at one of the largest public events in the area, The Surrey County Show on Bank Holiday Monday 30th May!

I'll be on the Princess Alice Hospice stand (near the Food Hall), raising money for the Princess Alice Hospice and the cancer charity Yes To Life.

If you're coming to the show, please do pop by and say hello - it's going to be a very tough challenge to complete this in one day, so any encouragement or friendly distractions will be very welcome!

What's It All About?

In September 2016 I will be attempting to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest free-standing mountain in the world, in memory of my wife Beata who tragically died of ovarian cancer at the age of just 41 in October 2015.

I will be raising money to give something back to two charities that did more than any other to support Beata during her fight against her cancer and during the final weeks of her life under palliative care - Yes To Life and the Princess Alice Hospice.

Why Kilimanjaro? I wanted to do something significant that reflected the scale of the challenge Beata faced and also the courage and determination that she showed during her fight. So, climbing the world’s highest free-standing mountain seemed appropriate!

Dying for a Cure

As well as fundraising I'm also campaigning to Stop Profiteering from Cancer. Perhaps rather naively, I hadn't realised how cancer was being commercially exploited until Beata and I became immersed in the world of cancer. I was staggered to learn that we're only investing in new drugs that can make a profit and are then allowing pharmaceutical companies to sell them back to us at exorbitant prices that the NHS often can't afford, even after R&D costs have been paid back many times over and even when the public has helped to pay for the research. Meanwhile, one person dies of cancer every 4 seconds.

Many more lives could be saved if drug prices were reduced and if R&D was optimised for health benefits not financial benefits, but because the development of these drugs is in the hands of private companies, they are making decisions to maximise shareholder returns rather than lives saved, effectively condemning millions of people across the world to premature deaths.

So, I've set up a campaign called Dying for a Cure to lobby the UK Government to do overhaul the whole system for developing cancer drugs, to put lives before profits. The campaign is linked to an online petition.

To find out more please visit the Dying for a Cure website.

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Saturday, 14 May 2016

Kilimanjaro on a Treadmill