The appeal to raise enough money to get three-year-old London girl Beatriz or ‘Bibi’ to Barcelona for cancer treatment has been successful.
London-Irish musicians launched a fundraising campaign last month in support of ‘Bibi’ who has a very rare type of cancer.
The announcement was made last week that £40,000 has been raised to get Bibi to Barcelona with £1450 coming from the Irish music community in London.
The musical campaign organised by the London-Irish sisters Molly and Nora Mulready saw London Irish musicians recording videos of themselves playing a tune, singing a song, or reading a poem, then posting it to Facebook and asking their friends to donate.
The family of Bibi said: “Thanks to you, all 3,125 of you, we have enough money to get Bibi the treatment she needs in Barcelona.
“We are so incredibly grateful to every single one of you. And if we could make a video with all of your faces we would (even the mysterious anonymous donors).
“Instead we’ve got a beautiful film of our most recent fundraisers, the brilliant record breakers, who managed to raise a ridonkulous amount in a very short space of time, during a very weird time.
“And an extra huge thank you to the fabulous Nathalie McDermott who made the video, helped organise the whole thing and came up with the #breakarecordforbibi idea!”
Nora Mulready posted on the Help Bibi Beat Cancer Facebook page: “Thank you to everyone who has helped with the fundraising for Bibi.
“Help Bibi Beat Cancer has raised over £40,000 in the last month, which is what they needed to start the treatment in Barcelona. A special thank you, thank you, thank you from me to everyone from the Irish and folk music community for getting involved. You have done something genuinely practically helpful for this wonderful little girl.”
At two and a half, Beatriz suddenly became very clingy and unhappy. Her parents thought it was just a phase. But she was diagnosed with high-risk neuroblastoma, an aggressive childhood cancer that has 40-50% chance of long-term survival.
Beatriz needs to get to Barcelona for specialist treatment for neuroblastoma that increases the potential survival rate for this type of cancer from 10% to 50%.
