To mark its 25th anniversary, the charity Tayside and North East Fife Children with Cancer and Leukaemia (TCCL) has gifted £25,000 to the Paediatric Oncology Unit at Tayside Children’s Hospital, Ninewells, where the majority of children in the area are treated.
The charity, established to give families practical and emotional support, is now one of the main charitable support services for hundreds of local families, assisting them at home and in hospital with funding for activities, parking and taxi vouchers and other financial assistance – and providing holidays for families in the charity’s holiday house in St Andrews, the TCCL Lodge.
The charity’s fundraising ball in Dundee’s Apex Hotel last month, raised sufficient funds to enable TCCL Lodge chair, Dr Rosalie Wilkie, to hand over a cheque for £25,000 to Dr Margaret Peebles, consultant paediatrician responsible for paediatric haematology and oncology at Ninewells.
Dr Wilkie said: “We are so grateful to individuals, organisations and businesses for their generous support. We wanted to something significant to mark the 25th anniversary and agreed that the best way would be to buy items that would make the children’s stay at Ninewells as easy as possible.”
Dr Peebles said: “The oncology team would like to thank TCCL for all their hard work and support over the last 25 years. Their fund-raising has supported Tayside Children’s Hospital over this time to improve facilities for children and their families. The latest donations will enable us to designate a teenagers’ area within our outpatient clinic, help reduce the age at which an anaesthetic is needed for scanning and improve the facilities for our inpatients.”
