A month ago, we were honoured to make a $600,000 donation to The Zero Childhood Cancer Program, a world-leading personalised medicine program being developed here in Australia which is revolutionising the way the most aggressive child cancers are being treated.

Cancer remains the second biggest killer of Australian children and the Zero Childhood Cancer Program has an impressive goal of reducing child cancer deaths to zero.

Our $600,000 donation, partly funded by Golden Casket unclaimed prize money, will be used to fund the final 116 children waiting to join the clinical trial. 

We caught up with one of the clinicians on the frontline, Associate Professor David Ziegler, Senior Staff Specialist in neuro-oncology at the Kids Cancer Centre at Sydney Children’s Hospital in Randwick, who explained exactly what the donation means to clinicians like himself. 

“This program is changing the way clinicians around the country are looking after children with cancer—  children with the most aggressive and the most difficult cancers to treat. It’s allowing us to do things that even just a few years ago we never dreamt were possible,” he explained. 

“Around the world it’s the most in-depth analysis of any child’s cancer. It’s being done in real time and at incredible speeds so we can actually get this in-depth analysis back to the parents and children within a few weeks and that’s allowing us to then look at the treatments we’re giving and see if we’re on the right pathway, and if there are different treatments we should be trying.

“In some cases it’s completely changing the way we treat these children.  

“We can’t do this work without the support of organisations like the Lott. We come up with these ideas and thoughts and trials but we can only make them a reality with support from the community.

“Thank you very much. It really is making a difference, you’re changing lives, you’re changing the outcome for our patients, and we can’t thank you enough."

We can’t wait to see the Zero Childhood Cancer Program expand even further and help so many children and their families across the country.

 Check out our conversation with Associate Professor David Ziegler below.