#teamfell are so excited to be joining the Families on Track Virtual Equator Relay as part of Paula Radcliffe’s Equator Relay. 

Childhood cancer, meets running, meets Africa - how could we not be all in for this one?!

Our story 

Isaac was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia in February 2016 at 9 years old. 

He had started suffering back pain when training at the athletics track in December 2015 but it was only in the new year that he became really ill and the many investigations led to the cancer diagnosis. He had 3 years and 4 months of chemotherapy treatment, finishing in May 2019.

As a family of runners, Simon (dad), Liz (mum), Isaac and Noah decided to use their running to raise money for 4 charities who research childhood cancer treatment and support families through the journey: Children with Cancer UK, Starlight, CCLG, and Young lives v Cancer. Over the course of Isaac’s treatment they and their friends raised £16,974.84 (including gift aid) through a variety of running challenges and events. This was shared between the 4 charities.

Childhood cancer in the UK

In the UK, 84% of children diagnosed with cancer, will survive, with higher survival rates for the more common childhood cancers. The charities we supported work hard to fund the pursuit of kinder treatments and improving that survival rate even more, as well as assisting alleviate financial burdens treatment can bring and support play in the hospital. But those survival rates are the rates for the UK.

Childhood cancer in Africa

If you were to be diagnosed with the same childhood cancer in Africa, your chance of survival sits at a shocking 1 in 10; 10%. And that is of the cases diagnosed.

But change is coming! The Shoe4Africa foundation opened East and Central Africa’s 1st public children’s hospital in 2015 in Eldorat, Kenya. The hospital has a 36 bed cancer ward but that is insufficient for the number of patients. So, Shoe4Africa are expanding and building the Juli Anne Perry Children’s Cancer Hospital next door. This will be sub-Saharan Africa’s first ever children’s cancer hospital, public or private. Not only that, the hospital will house Moi Medical School training new paediatric oncologists. At present in Kenya, where the population is around 50 million, there are only 3 trained paediatric oncologists. 

What is Paula’s Equator Relay and the Families on Track Virtual Relay?

On 24th December 2021, Paul Radcliffe will be joined by Kenyan Olympic athletes to run an 80km relay from the Equator to the site of the new hospital, where Paula’s daughter Isla, who was diagnosed with cancer in 2020, will put the first shovel into the ground. 

Through Paula and Isla’s Families on Track initiative, they are inviting families and schools to join in and complete their own 80k relay between now and the 24th and raise funds in support. 

Our virtual relay

We are going to complete our 80km relay in one day on Monday 20th December, with Isaac starting us off on the start line at Peterborough Athletics Track where his back pain started, and he’ll bring us in to finish the challenge at Addenbrookes hospital, Cambridge, where he was diagnosed and received his treatment. The rest of the Fell family team will run legs in between to get us there.

Why have we set a £1700 target?

For all our events for the whole of Isaac’s treatment we raised £17,000 for UK childhood cancer charities. 

For this 1 challenge we wanted to raise 10% of that total for Africa’s children needing cancer treatment as a symbol that this will go towards improving that shocking 10% survival rate.

Why Africa and why this project? 

We joined a Families on Track event earlier this year with the Move charity, who support movement through cancer treatment. It seemed the perfect fit - running and raising the profile and money for childhood cancer. But what’s the link with Africa? To be honest, the statistics speak for themselves, there doesn’t need to be a link, but there is.

In 1979, Simon, age 3, moved with his family to what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo where his dad worked for the Leprosy Mission as a nurse in a hospital. Their stay was cut short in June 1981 when a medical emergency brought them back to the UK for treatment.

In 1996, Liz went to Zimbabwe on a voluntary project, with some of the work being in a hospital and children’s home. As a result of loving that experience, in 1999 she co-led a similar project to Uganda. Her co-leader was her dad who was keen to go to Africa having heard the stories she told from Zimbabwe. That trip led him on to arrange a charity fundraising trip to climb Mount Kilimanjaro and then later he went on to become director of a charity arranging for young people to serve on gap years all over Africa.