Fundraising for cancer (by Elisabet)

Note: I decide to write with bigger font size, so it's easier for YS to read, as she is having some problem with her vision, as she said in her comment two posts before. 

Every year by mid-December the Catalan public TV shows a 15-hour programme called Marató (Marathon) on a Sunday to raise funds to fight against an illness. Many volunteers answer the hundreds of phones installed for the purpose to attend the many people who call to make their donations. Simultaneously, all kinds of events take place in many villages and cities all over Catalonia: singing, dancing, theatre performances, cooking, races, all kinds of sports... popular activities open to everybody in which children, adults, old people, whole families take part. All the money gathered from the tickets sold goes entirely for the cause. Even a CD and a book are published, where the singers and writers participate without receiving any money. Again, all the money coming from the selling of the CDs and the books goes entirely for the cause.

This year the aim was the fight against cancer, all types of cancer; all the money going entirely for biomedical research so that research centers and hospitals can start new projects to know more about the behavior of tumors and, therefore, be able to develop new medicines and specific treatments for each type of tumor, to make drugs more effective and with less side effects. It's what nowadays is called "personalized treatments" and the aim is to prevent metastases from happening and, in case they happen, turn them into chronic diseases.

What's been really amazing is that after 20 years doing this fundraising programme this has been the record year. Never before so much money had been raised. Taking into account that most of the donations come from the anonymous population and given the present context of economic crisis with such high unemployment rates, the effort made by the people and the solidarity derived from such effort is something really touching, deeply moving and admirable.
The amount raised to date is 10.113.152 Euro and, as donations can be made until end of March 2013, it can get even higher.

This gives us who suffer from this terrible illness big doses of hope, but also for those who will come after us; for my hope and my wish is that the people who suffer from cancer in future have much more chances of healing and that they don't have to bear so many side effects. So, less physical and psychological suffering.

Another positive aspect is that nowadays it doesn't matter where the research is being done: when the results come they will be shared by doctors and hospitals all over the world, so the new treatments will reach more and more people.

Things like these reinforce my trust in humanity, in society, and I'm happy to know that when it comes to serious matters, such important human values as solidarity are still there, like beautiful stars shining bright with the light of generosity.