More than £2m raised for very sick children: that’s a great achievement – and it belongs to you. Over the past few weeks we have reported on the lives of some of Britain’s most vulnerable people, albeit at one of our finest hospitals, Great Ormond Street. And readers have responded with the generosity that we have come to expect, but never take for granted.

Together with our stablemates, i, The Independent on Sunday, and the London Evening Standard, we’ve shown that while staff do amazing work with their charges, the need for funding is still urgent. Your money, and that from our corporate donors and the Government, will fund equipment and care for critically ill children. It will also fund further research at the hospital, and support the Louis Dundas Centre. I know many of you read our unbearably moving recent interview with Ruth Kennedy, Louis’ mum, who set up the centre after her son died of a brain tumour, aged four.

There is more to be done. We’re not stopping yet. This is the most successful campaign in our history, but we want to go further and raise more money over the coming weeks. For more evidence of why this is worthwhile, please see today’s coverage. You can donate using the coupon there. Every penny is appreciated and well spent.

I’m afraid desperately ill children have been something of a theme of the week. Many of you will have seen the images reportedly coming out of the besieged Syrian town of Madaya, where children are starving to death. This is a direct result of the civil war. Astonishingly, some 4.5 million Syrians – four times the population of Birmingham – live in hard-to-reach areas. Up to 400,000 do not have access to urgently needed life-saving aid.

Statistics can only tell so much of any story: words and pictures move us most. And those that reportedly came out of Madaya were the grimmest conceivable reminder of the human cost of the abyss into which this beautiful, once-flourishing region has fallen. As our leader opposite argues, five years on from the Arab Spring, the apparent promise of those revolutions has been betrayed. Our big graphic on pages 30-31 illustrates in some detail the range of tyranny, oppression, war and brutality which stretches across this benighted patch of our planet.

It’s our job as journalists both to report events and to analyse them, and sometimes to encourage and compel action to address injustice and suffering. No cause moves us more than the plight of children enduring terrible pain. Thanks to you, we have been able to help some of the lucky ones here in Britain. Across the world, hope endures, but the fight has barely begun.

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

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