Marie Curie launches Great Daffodil Appeal

Notes to editor

The Great Daffodil Appeal
The Great Daffodil Appeal is Marie Curie’s biggest fundraising event and encourages everyone to give a donation and wear one of the charity’s daffodil pins during March.  Since the first Great Daffodil Appeal took place in 1986, an incredible £61.5 million has been raised to fund the charity’s work. This money has enabled Marie Curie to provide more of the free hands-on care and emotional support the charity is renowned for. Daffodil pins will be available from volunteer collectors, local shops and supermarkets. For more information call 0845 601 3107 (local rate) or visit www.mariecurie.org.uk/daffodil.
 
Marie Curie Cancer Care is one of the UK’s largest charities. Employing more than 2,700 nurses, doctors and other healthcare professionals, it provided care to more than 35,000 terminally ill patients in the community and in its nine hospices last year and is the largest provider of hospice beds outside the NHS.
 
Funding
Around 70 per cent of the charity’s income comes from the generous support of thousands of individuals, membership organisations and businesses, with the balance of our funds coming from the NHS.
 
Marie Curie Nurses
The charity is best known for its network of Marie Curie Nurses working in the community to provide end of life care, totally free for patients in their own homes.
 
Research
The charity provides core funding for three palliative care research facilities; the Marie Curie Palliative Care Research Unit at University College London, the Marie Curie Palliative Care Institute Liverpool and the Marie Curie Palliative Care Centre at the Wales Cancer Trials Unit (Cardiff University). The charity also supports palliative and end of life care research through its project grant funding streams, the Marie Curie Cancer Care Research Programme (administered by Cancer Research UK) and the Dimbleby Marie Curie Cancer Care Research Fund. Both research programmes aims to tackle the funding and knowledge gap in palliative and end of life care research, which in turn will benefit patients, families and carers. The charity also funds seven fundamental scientific research groups which investigate the causes and treatments of cancer. This research was previously carried out at the Marie Curie Research Institute in Oxted, Surrey. The programmes are now located in universities around the country, and will receive funding from the charity until March 2013.
 
The right to die in place of choice
Research shows around 63 per cent of people would like to die at home if they had a terminal illness, with a sizeable minority opting for hospice care. However, more than 50 per cent of cancer deaths still occur in hospital, the place people say they would least like to be. Since 2004 Marie Curie Cancer Care has been campaigning for more patients to be able to make the choice to be cared for and die in their place of choice.