Horncastle group chairman Andrew Horncastle has been a Daisy charity Trustee and involved with the appeal since 2010. His involvement and investment has contributed towards the opening of a £4.5 million world class diagnosis and research facility at Castle Hill Hospital in Cottingham, East Yorkshire.
The facility which is known as ‘Phase 2’ of the Daisy appeal charity, was opened on Monday 14th July 2014 by former Health Secretary Baroness Virgina Bottomley, and is named The Jack Brignall PET- CT centre, after one of the founding members of The Daisy Appeal charity.
The facility houses a PET- CT scanner, which can provide early diagnosis for cancer, heart disease and dementia. This has replaced a mobile PET-CT scanner in the area, which only had the capacity to visit twice a week. This now means that more patients in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire can be diagnosed and treated quickly and more efficiently, and has only been made possible by the tireless work of volunteers who have donated both money and time to this cause.
This is the first centre in the UK to house a new generation Siemens PET-CT scanner and follows the opening of the The Daisy appeal building back in 2008, a clinical research and laboratory facility which required £8 million pounds of donations in order to be built.
Now the charity is looking to raise a further £3.5 million in order to house a ‘cyclotron’ at Castle Hill. This will allow radioactive tracers to be produced on site, which are required in the scanning of patients.
Elsewhere, Hull University Union’s Raising and Giving organisation (Hull RAG) have managed to raise more than £50,000 for charity, including the Daisy Appeal. This was achieved through various charitable events, including the climbing of Mount Kilimanjaro!
Well done Hull RAG!
For more on The Daisy Appeal and to donate, please visit www.daisyappeal.org