The financial year is coming to an end and there is no better time to make a tax-deductible donation to MS Research Australia.
Your donation will help change the lives of people living with MS through supporting the effort to accelerate Australian MS research for prevention, better treatments and a cure for MS. Over 15 short years, MS Research Australia has become the largest not-for-profit funder of MS research in Australia, with over $44.3 million invested in funding and facilitating vital research. With your support significant achievements have been made including:
- Twenty new grants awarded in 2019 to outstanding Australian MS researchers, totalling over $1.75 million. Research focus areas ranged across exploring the role of nutrition and lifestyle factors in MS, targeting myelin repair, and the development of new ways to track disease progression.
- The publication and launch of the Health Economic Impact of MS in Australia 2017 Report. This report is an update of our original 2010 report and demonstrates the enormous burden of MS and its impact on quality of life, as well as updating prevalence figures for Australians with MS. The report showed that MS now costs Australia $1.75 billion per year (an increase of 41% from 2010) and the number of people with MS increased to over 25,600 (an increase of just over 20% from 2010).
- A new ‘Stop and Reverse MS’ in ten years initiative, which brought together stakeholders from across the MS community including people living with MS, researchers, clinicians, industry, representatives from MS Societies, donors and philanthropic organisations. The Stop and Reverse Assembly has developed a strategy to accelerate research with an integrated approach to collaboration, funding and governance.
- Over $2 million invested in the last decade into research into Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV) and the development of a vaccine – an extremely important area of research given that 100% of people with MS have been identified as being infected by EBV.
- Seven major research platforms funded and coordinated to bridge knowledge gaps, including the Vitamin D MS Prevention trial, the Australian MS Longitudinal Study (involving over 3,000 participants each year) and the Autologous Haematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant Registry.
Typically there is a 25% increase in donations received by charitable organisations in June in Australia. This is a wonderful time to lend support to causes that you care about as it is easy to track your donations and the time line for claiming your tax deduction is short. Over the coming year, the team at MS Research Australia will continue working hard to accelerate the effort to end MS. Your generous support will continue to play a vital role.
To be a part of the change this end of financial year, please consider donating to MS Research Australia at msra.org.au.
