Fight Cancer

Our passion and vision is to provide cancer patients with a second chance of life. For 25 years, Fight Cancer Foundation has been dedicated to giving hope and saving the lives of cancer patients around Australia and overseas through significant projects including the Australian Bone Marrow Donor Registry, Research Laboratories, the BMDI Cord Blood Bank, accommodation houses, support programs and support groups. Fight Cancer Foundation is a registered charity providing care, treatment and support services to cancer patients and their families and funding significant cancer research projects. The organisation was established in 1989 as the Bone Marrow Donor Institute by a small group of families devastated by leukaemia with the dedicated aim of founding a donor registry in Australia. Today, the Australian Bone Marrow Donor Registry has 175,400 Australians registered and the internationally-linked registry provides access to 10 million potential donors worldwide. Another life-saving initiative, the BMDI Cord Blood Bank stores cord blood units from umbilical cords and placentas, providing ‘ready to use’ transplant tissue for patients needing a stem cell or bone marrow transplant who are unable to be matched with a   suitable donor. Fight Cancer Foundation is partnering with The Royal Melbourne Hospital to support vitalcancer research being undertaken into treatments and cures. This combining of expertise and resources is enabling development and delivery of integrated cancer research programs that better support cancer patients and our communities. Through its expertise in supporting cancer patients and their families, Fight Cancer Foundation developed education programs to assist children and young people living with cancer who may be away from school for up to two years during treatment and recovery. They can now continue to look forward to fulfilling their education and career goals and dreams through the Royal Children’s Hospital and the Westmead Children’s Hospital in Sydney. Fight Cancer Foundation continues to expand this program to include additional young students. Cancer patients often require months of hospitalisation and regular visits. With advances in treatments it is becoming more common for cancer patients to be treated in day clinics than be admitted to acute care beds. In country situations this presents patients with the need to either travel regularly or find local accommodation. Families’ lives are turned upside down when a family member becomes ill – they face overwhelming and daunting challenges, emotionally and financially. Families are often given short notice and don’t know for how long they will need to be away from home and handy to their hospital.  This causes immense upheaval as the family tries to grasp the changes in their lives.  Fight Cancer Foundation aims to make these changes as easy as possible. Fight Cancer Foundation provides three low-cost Accommodation Centres in North Melbourne, Hobart and Albury, relieving patients and their families of undue financial stress and the worry of having to undertake frequent long distance travel to access treatment centres. The next phase in the life of Fight Cancer Foundation will see a growth in regional accommodation centres, collaboration with key researchers into leukaemia and other blood cancers, young students achieving their study and life goals and the growth of our support programs – always towards the target of improving outcomes for people living with cancer. Fight Cancer Foundation relies on the support of the community, supporters, donors, volunteers, government, corporate partners and all Australians to continue its life-saving work.