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.

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.

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.

• we want to stop pregnancy complications like obstetric cholestasis and 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.
• we want to find the causes of premature birth. Doctors still don't fully understand what causes some babies to be born early, and there are no effective treatments to prevent premature labour.