A smile for kids on dialysis

Luis’ twin brother Joe, who watched him and other children at Great Ormond Street Hospital go through the ordeal of dialysis and prolonged hospital admissions, is launching his own campaign to help them.

Joe, aged 10, is creating a jokebook for children to while away the hours and put a smile on their faces. His project began almost accidentally during an emergency trip to hospital, when he began making up and cracking jokes to help cheer people up. Soon, he was illustrating his own jokes in a large notebook.

Joe hopes to make his new jokebook available to every child in Britain who is on dialysis – and is asking them to supply their own jokes for future editions.

To find out more, visit http://www.facebook.com/joesjokes

Facebook forum for families

The Kidney Kids Forum is now up and running on Facebook. If you have children with kidney disease please join this group to discuss, share and support other families. It’s a closed group so only other members can see your posts. Search for ‘Kidney Kids Forum’ on Facebook to find us. Look forward to meeting you over there!

Launch of Kidney Kids charity

To mark World Kidney Day 2014 – as well as Luis’ 1-year ‘Transplantiversary’ – we are launching a new charity. 

Kidney Kids is the UK’s first charity for children affected by kidney disease and their families. We will work to promote greater awareness about the impacts of the disease and the needs of sufferers and their families. We will raise funds for medical research which experts believe could hold the key to major improvements in outcomes and potentially point the way towards a cure. We will also campaign to reduce transplant waiting times for children by encouraging donor registration and by calling for the introduction of an ‘opt out’ law.

I very much hope you will feel able to support Kidney Kids. You can find our Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/kidneykidsuk . We also have a website under construction at http://www.kidneykids.co.uk . I will post details of the launch shortly.

All the best

Ed