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A new initiative is being set up to encourage financial market participants to raise funds for, and awareness of, the pernicious effects of Motor Neurone Disease (MND). The City against MND Network is being promoted by former FOW publisher, David Setters, who was diagnosed with a slowly progressive version of the disease in 2012. He is working with the MND Association and others working in and around the City of London.
MND (also known as ALS in North America) is a fatal, rapidly progressing disease that affects the brain and spinal cord. It kills a third of people within a year and more than half within two years of diagnosis. It attacks the nerves that control movement so muscles no longer work. It can leave people locked in a failing body, unable to move, talk, swallow and eventually breathe. There is currently no cure.
“Up to 5,000 people in the UK are living with MND and six people die from it each day,” says Setters. “It is not as rare as people think with recent statistics showing that a person's lifetime risk of developing MND is just 1 in 300. As in any other walk of life, it will have touched many people working in financial services.”
“The City against MND Network aims to provide a focus for corporate, collaborative and individual giving from the City, its institutions and service companies,” he continues. “I’ve already found several individuals in the futures business who have been in some way “touched” by the disease, whether through family, colleagues or friends.”
The project will launch in mid April with an event attended by Chris Broad, the ex-England cricketer and father of current star, Stuart Broad. Chris Broad’s second wife, Miche, passed away with an aggressive form of MND in 2010.
“We’ve identified a specific research project based at the new Francis Crick Institute at St Pancras run by University College London that we would like to help fund,” says Setters. “There have been some very positive advances recently, particularly with respect to the study of gene mutations. With the Institute being so close to its doorstep, we hope that the City and its institutions will get behind this very important work and help accelerate our advance towards a long hoped for cure.”
If you would like further information or if you have been touched in some way by MND please join the City against MND Network LinkedIn group at https://www.linkedin.com/groups/8424261 where we will be publishing details of how companies, groups and individuals can help.
