Join Santa Dash to help fund chemo unit

The festive fun run around the 1K events triangle takes place at 10-30 am on Saturday, November 21st, and is the perfect precursor to the town’s Christmas lights switch on celebrations next day.

Entry is £5 for adults and free for accompanied children aged 16 and under with every penny going in to the appeal pot to raise £100,000 towards a new, £200,000 state-of-the-art chemotherapy unit at Burnley General Hospital.

Plans for the state-of-the-art unit have been drawn up by East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust, which manages Burnley General Hospital and is also contributing £100,000 to its costs. They are due to go out to tender any day with a winter build and a spring opening scheduled.

Once its build is complete, the new chemotherapy unit will replace Burnley General Hospital’s current, much smaller chemotherapy suite, which although provides an excellent level of care, has no room to expand or for additional, updated facilities.

Around 4,000 chemotherapy treatments are now delivered annually at Burnley General Hospital but this is a figure that is increasing year on year because of improving cancer care and an aging population and there was concern that the current suite was becoming too small to meet demand and that some patients would have to be referred to hospitals further away for their chemotherapy.

Rosemere’s appeal is being led by its East Lancs fundraising co-ordinator Dan Hill. Dan said: “We have never organised anything like this in the Burnley area before but given the fantastic response to the appeal that we’ve received from people in and around Burnley, we’ve decided to take a chance and call on folk to join us in the Santa Dash, which is a bit of festive fun.

“We’ve a couple of things up our sleeve, which we’re confident will add to the atmosphere and which we’ll announce a bit nearer the time but because it is a new event, we’re limiting the dash’s number of participants to just 300 so please register now as we’re hoping all the places will fill up quickly. The dash is not a race nor is it about collecting lots of sponsors. Instead, it’s about people of all ages coming together to show they care and have what we hope will be an enjoyable morning.

Helping Rosemere organise the Santa Dash are members of Towneley’s Park Runners.

To enter the dash, call 01772 522913 to register or email [email protected]