This significant contribution marks the final act of generosity from Bottoms Up, a charity that has championed bowel cancer diagnosis and treatment for 25 years. The charity is closing after decades of transformative fundraising.
This generous gift in support of the Royal Free Charity’s £2.2million fundraising drive for a new surgical robot will enable more patients to benefit from minimally-invasive surgeries. Robotic surgery results in shorter recovery time and less pain and scarring.
Tina Hancock, chair of Bottoms Up, said: “We were delighted to donate the last of our funds towards the fundraising campaign for the purchase of the state-of-the-art da Vinci Xi surgical robot. We at Bottoms Up and its many loyal supporters are thrilled to round off our long and rewarding relationship with the Royal Free Hospital in this way.”
Currently, RFL operates a single surgical robot, primarily used for kidney cancer surgeries, which is working at full capacity. A new robot will double the NHS trust’s capacity to perform life-saving operations on cancers of the bowel, liver, pancreas and gall bladder.
Jon Spiers, chief executive of the Royal Free Charity, said: “We’re enormously grateful to Tina Hancock, chair of the charity, its founder Pamela Kaufman and all of the committee members and supporters of Bottoms Up for their huge contribution to cancer services over the past quarter century.
“Tina and Pamela’s commitment to helping people with bowel cancer has already made a huge difference in terms of the number of people our incredible staff have been able to treat and we’re delighted that their parting gift will go towards helping cancer patients long into the future.”
