Thursday, February 26th 2009

By selma al-samarrai

Feb. 23 and Feb. 24 of this week marked the visit of six faculty members from McMaster University to Alberta to participate in extreme winter sports for the purpose of fundraising for digestive diseases. Richard Hunt, the Vice President of the Canadian Digestive Health Foundation and a professor of medicine at McMaster explained why fundraising for health research has gained such importance, “I think we’re living in difficult financial times so the problem was already there in many ways. Governments are not investing as much as they should in recent budgets.”

“Added to this, other funding agencies are going to have a problem because the stock market is taking a lock and banks are taking interest rates down to virtually zero so many funding agencies are not now making money out of investments which they would then be getting from grant funding… one way that groups now raise money is to get people to do things and then they go out and get friends and family to sponsor them to do it. In this case because the annual scientific meeting of The Canadian association of gastrology and the Canadian Liver Association and the Gastrointestinal surgeons [was in] Banff, it seemed an opportunity to have an event two days ahead of that meeting in which people can be challenged to several tasks of winter sports activities.”

The sports activities include driving a dog sled through Snowy Owl, snowshoeing through the forests of Spray Valley, summiting the Ha Ling Mountain and cross-country skiing over Canada’s Continental Divide. Following the two days of winter activities are a few days of Science meetings, presentations and discussion groups that will conclude on Mar. 2.

The six McMaster faculty members participating in the winter sports are members of the Farncombe Digestive Health Research Institute, which was established six months ago. According to Hunt, their attendance is also a way to highlight the institutes’ establishment in addition to raising awareness of Gastrointestinal research within the community of Hamilton.

Regarding why digestive research has become such a large focus, Hunt explained, “Almost a third of the Canadian population suffer in some way from digestive diseases. One of the difficulties here is its almost a public of social issue… It’s an interesting social thing, heart and stroke gets over a 100 million a year from public awareness… and that funding is going largely into managing diseases that are affecting people in the last ten years of their life, possibly 20. Whereas digestive diseases actually affect young people and they have a huge social impact. For example, a 30 year old with Chromes Disease may be married with young children and that social impact is huge.”

Hunt believed that the social factor that contributes to the lack of attention of GI diseases is attributed to, “most Gastrointestinal symptoms aren’t particularly parlor symptoms, when you bloat, belch, fart, you have diarrhea, people don’t talk about it… many patients suffer and they suffer seriously and in silence.”

Gastrointestinal disorders range from life threatening to discomforting. Hunt elaborated, “Some of them are life threatening, colon cancer… chronic liver disease, chromes disease [and] pancreatitis. We also have nuisance diseases like heart burn bloating, alter bowl habit and discomfort and so we have a very broad spectrum of conditions that affect the community.”

The fundraising initiative is expected to achieve approximately 330,000 dollars to go to the Canadian Digestive Health Foundation.

Tags: Farncombe Digestive Health Research Institute, fundraise, winter sports