Scrub Up September brought together an amazing mix of Gold Coasters, all passionate about helping their community . Everyone enjoyed the opportunity to don their free scrub hats supplied by the Foundation and hold a range of exciting and unique fundraising events to support Gold Coast Health staff. Betty Get Better certainly had her hands full getting around to say hi and Thank You to everyone who participated, but she came back with so many great stories. We’re still counting and with some fundraising activity still to be held, we expect to go close to our $50,000 target, the response from the Gold Coast has been fantastic!

Funds raised during Scrub Up September this year will be used to fund important Gold Coast Health projects like Motor Neuron disease research, and to provide emergency accommodation for families who’ve been displaced and face distress and hardship as a result of serious injury to a loved one who needs trauma care.

If you have a great fundraising idea we want to hear from you. Visit www.scrubupseptember.com.au to register and our team will get in touch with you.

Two cutting edge health research projects on the Gold Coast that could prolong and even save lives, wouldn’t be possible without the generous support of the local community. 

The Gold Coast Hospital Foundation secured $100,000 in donations within just six weeks to fund the Rapid Research Project which aims to reduce diagnosis times for children with sepsis from two days to just a matter of hours.

“This is an exciting time for us on the Coast, with the Gold Coast University Hospital ideally located within the emerging Health and Knowledge Precinct,” said Kim Sutton, CEO of the Gold Coast Hospital Foundation. This is just the start of our efforts to raise funds to support the Gold Coast Health’s research program, she added.

The Foundation’s major fundraiser, the Hospital Heroes Ball on August 4, focused on health research.

“Considering 50 children die each year from sepsis in Australia and New Zealand it is vitally important to reduce diagnosis times as every hour increases mortality by 6 per cent. Another research project will test a new treatment to slow the progression of motor neurone disease, which is known as the ‘1000-day disease’ because the average patient is given a thousand days to live upon diagnosis; it also took the life of the world’s most well-known physicist, Stephen Hawking earlier this year,” Ms Sutton said.

“You can’t cure the disease, but doctors at Gold Coast University Hospital will test new ways to slow disease progression, and enhance life expectancy, by using new medicinal cannabis oil. It’s not only researchers and clinicians that could have an impact worldwide with their research but local residents as well, as it is their decision to donate to the Gold Coast Hospital Foundation that supports this research to happen. Funding and delivering cutting-edge health research will help attract some of the best researchers and clinicians from around the country to come and live and work here.”

To show your support you can make a donation at https://gchfoundation.org.au/donate

Click here to download the full media release.