History

The Gloucestershire Chest Fund is a non-profit making registered charity whose aim is to help create centres of excellence for the detection, diagnosis and treatment of chest disease in the county of Gloucestershire.  This will be achieved by buying equipment and funding services identified by the Thoracic Consultants as needed but that are currently not available from NHS funds.

Mrs Doreen Roberts, a lifelong sufferer of chest disease, who wanted to do something to repay the care she had received from Dr. John Prior at Standish Hospital, set up the Fund in 1991.  To date the Fund has raised, and mostly spent, £462,000.  Doreen Roberts, the Founder of our charity died in December 1999 but her dream continues.

The needs are endless. A nebulizer, vital to many chronic sufferers, costs £200, cardio-pulmonary exercise testing equipment £22,500, research into early tuberculosis diagnosis £30,000. We have, so far, spent £28,000 proving the viability and effectiveness of a pulmonary rehabilitation service and we are continuing to fight to get the NHS to adopt this service as the only effective way of helping chronic sufferers.

Chronic lung disease affects 10% of over 75 year olds and 2% of the rest of the population.  These figures are on the increase and take no account of those sufferers whose problems have not yet reached chronic level. It is estimated that in Gloucestershire every family will have someone, sometime suffering from chest disease.

 

 

 

 

The Future

We will continue and expand the work of the Trust.

We will remain local. 

We will never incur excessive overheads.