A six-year-old girl is fundraising for Great Ormond Street hospital to boost its efforts to find a cure for her inoperable brain tumour.
Olivia Alderson has been under the care of the hospital since the age of two, when the tumour was found after she stopped walking and began to vomit.
After her third round of chemotherapy failed, Olivia, from Epping, was able to enrol in a clinical trial at GOSH - part-funded by her family’s previous donations - that uses an inhibitor drug to reduce the size of the tumour.
Tomorrow she and her friends at Theydon Bois Primary School in Epping will take part in a Bad Hair Day event aiming to raise £1,000 for GOSH’s charity, which funds pioneering research and new facilities. Several neighbouring schools are also taking part.
They are being supported by London cab drivers, who have donned wigs and advertised the day on their vehicles.
Olivia’s mother Vicki, who teaches at her school, said the family had already raised about £15,000 for GOSH and research into brain tumours.
“By the time she is 21, I want to have raised £100,000,” she said.
The location of Olivia’s tumour means it cannot be removed surgically.
Mrs Alderson said: “Four years ago, we were thinking we won’t have a daughter in a few months’ time.
To then be told that new research has found that all you have to do is take this oral medicine twice a day and the tumour is destroyed is amazing.”
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