The Independent on Sunday’s appeal for Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) has raised more than £3.5m to help critically ill children, research the cures for rare diseases, and give support to parents and patients when they are at their most vulnerable.

The Give to GOSH appeal, which has been the most successful appeal in the history of The IoS, ends on 14 February, the 164th anniversary of the foundation of Great Ormond Street Hospital.

In 1852 the hospital was known as the Hospital for Sick Children in Great Ormond Street. It was based in a central London townhouse with only two doctors and 10 beds. Since then it has become a world-leading centre for research and the treatment of the most seriously ill children.

Today, as was the case then, the hospital relies heavily on charity and the willingness of the British public, and recently the readers of The IoS, to support it in offering some of the best paediatric care in the world.

Martin Elliott, a paediatric heart surgeon and former medical director of the hospital, said: “We can’t be more grateful. There would be no GOSH without charity. It started that way; that’s how it is today. It’s heart-warming to see how much affection people hold for the hospital. And that affection and the generosity of the British public is one of the reasons why we are so dedicated to the relentless pursuit of excellence in the care we offer.”

Evgeny Lebedev, the owner of The Independent on Sunday, The Independent and the London Evening Standard, said: “There is no more deserving cause for our generosity than a sick child, and no institution I am more proud to support than a hospital which works day and night to try to make them better. This appeal has raised more money than we ever dreamed possible, and that means more children can receive the care they need and more doctors and nurses the support they deserve.”

Funds from the three-month IoS appeal, which has been run alongside the Evening Standard, London Live, i and The Independent, will support the creation of a dedicated heart unit for the sickest cardiac patients. The unit, due to be completed in 2017, will help patients such as two-year-old Elliott Livingstone, whom the Give to GOSH appeal has been following while he waits for a new heart.

Mr Lebedev added: “I want to thank everyone who, in whatever way and to whatever extent, has helped us reach such an incredible target. In the future, I hope that children will recover, go home and live full lives as a result of what this money can pay for and what GOSH will do with it. There can be no greater achievement than that.”

Some of the £3.56m raised by the appeal will also allow the Louis Dundas Centre for Children’s Palliative Care to continue its vital work helping children with life-limiting and life-threatening illnesses. Palliative care has rarely had the funding or research it deserves and staff at the LDC say the focus on their work could “transform” the public’s perception of what they do.

Research teams at GOSH will also use £1m of funds from the appeal for medical research into rare children’s diseases, including developing gentler, less traumatic forms of treatment for childhood cancers such as brain tumours. The focus will be on improving survival rates and long-term outcomes for these children, by using funding from the appeal as “pump primers” to attract further research funding and to get projects off the ground.

To Give to GOSH go to: http://ind.pn/1Mydxqt

To find out more about our appeal and why we're supporting GOSH go to: http://ind.pn/1MycZkr

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