Introduction

Touching Tiny Lives is the Action Medical Research appeal to raise funds for vital medical research to reduce pregnancy complications, premature birth, and give more babies a better start in life.

Thanks in large part to advances in medical research, the majority of babies can look forward to a healthy future. For most families it is a time of immense joy and relief when their child is born safely. But not all births go as expected.

Each year in the UK 70,000 newborn babies need special care. Sadly, 50,000 babies are born prematurely. Tragically, more than 25 premature babies die every week because they were born too soon.

Only medical research can give us a real understanding of the causes and conditions that put mothers and babies at risk, and enable doctors to find new treatments.

With the help of Action Medical Research funding leading doctors and scientists are working hard to find better ways to diagnose women at risk of pregnancy complications, to understand why premature birth occurs and find ways to prevent it, as well as looking for new treatments to help sick babies.

More money is urgently needed to continue to fund crucial research. With your help we can be confident that new discoveries will be found

Aims

Not enough funding is devoted to researching the many conditions which affect babies, such as premature birth. Yet the thousands and thousands of babies born prematurely each year are at risk of suffering serious health problems for the rest of their lives.

Action Medical Research believes more must be done to ensure that all babies grow up healthy, and that is why we have launched the Touching Tiny Lives campaign.

The campaign has the following aims:

• We want to stop pregnancy complications like pre-eclampsia, which can often lead to problems for both mothers and babies.

• We want babies who are born with problems to have the best chance of a healthy start in life. They need special help in their crucial first days and weeks.

• Ultimately, we want to find the causes of premature birth and other problems. Doctors still don't fully understand what causes some babies to be born early, and there are no effective treatments to prevent premature labour.

Support us

Action Medical Research is already working in all these areas, but we urgently need more money to continue this life-saving research. Over the coming months we will be launching a number of fundraising and research initiatives to support Touching Tiny Lives.

Track record

Action Medical Research is behind some of the biggest breakthroughs in medical care for babies during the past 50 years. Our Charity has played a crucial role in developing the polio vaccine in the UK, ultrasound scanning in pregnancy, and in discovering the link between folic acid and preventing spina bifida. More recently, our funding helped develop a new kind of infrared brain scanner to measure the oxygen levels and blood supply in babies, and so help prevent brain damage during labour and delivery. Our researchers have also successfully identified the faulty gene that is responsible for causing a form of cleft lip and palate.

As a forward-thinking charity, Action Medical Research is creating a healthier future for everyone. Although we will still fund work into a wide range of diseases and conditions affecting all age groups, Touching Tiny Lives will give extra impetus towards solving the problems of pregnancy, childbirth and the early years.

Go to the get involved or giving sections to find out how you can help, or make a donation now.