Cure Kids Research into Hope

Cure Kids objectives are to fund medical research that:

• provides better treatments
• improves the quality of life for children with life threatening diseases
• prolongs the lives of children with life threatening diseases
• will hopefully provide a cure for children’s diseases

• Cot Death
• Birth abnormalities
• Cystic fibrosis
• Childhood Leukaemia
• Hole-in-the heart babies

Facts and stats on diseases we fund research into:

Asthma in Children
The biggest cause of hospital admissions in NZ. 550,000 school days lost each year to asthma

Childhood Leukaemia
Childhood cancer is the leading cause of death in children after accidental death in NZ

Cystic Fibrosis
Nearly 400 New Zealanders suffer from this incurable lung disease

Genetic Disease
1 in 30 babies born in NZ will have some genetic birth malformation

Heart Disease
Over 600 babies are born with heart defects each year – at least 30 will
need corrective surgery

Kidney Disease
A kidney transplant costs between $80,000 - $110,000

Perinatal Research
Care for pre-term babies costs $50mill per annum

Pneumonia
NZ has the highest hospital admission rate for childhood pneumonia in the Western world. It costs the country $7mill per annum

Type 1 Diabetes
Over 200 new childhood diagnoses are made each year. It costs an estimated $1,000,000 to manage a Type 1 Diabetes child including secondary complications in later life

Successful research that Cure Kids has helped fund:

The Professor who found that ‘needle in a haystack’
Professor Robertson is our Chair of Child Health Research at the University of Otago. After many years of frustrating research, Professor Robertson has stunned the medical world by identifying a deadly mutation in a single gene - amongst a staggering 3,000 million individual units! This breakthrough means fresh hope for understanding and treatment of many congenital diseases.

Hundreds of babies owe their lives to our man, Ed
In the past 15 years, New Zealand’s rate of cot death has plummeted from over 280 per year to around 60, and continues to fall. Much of this is due to the preventative strategies by Professor Ed Mitchell, our Chair of Child Heath Research at the University of Auckland. He is a sought-after international authority on cot death (SIDS).

Building on our leukaemia breakthrough
Researchers funded by Cure Kids at the University of Otago have recently made groundbreaking advances into understanding when the genetic change for leukaemia occurs in children. Cure Kids is funding University of Otago junior research fellow, Kylie Drake with a $75,000 grant to enable this research to continue.

www.curekids.org.nz

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