A family who spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on private treatment to try to save their daughter is supporting our petition calling for increased Government investment to help find a cure for the disease. 

Brooke Leavey was diagnosed with an inoperable diffuse midline glioma – commonly known as diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG) – in April 2019.  

After six weeks of radiotherapy under the NHS, desperate parents Dan and Lisa searched for clinical trials and felt “forced” into talking to private consultants. They spent £200,000 on monthly trips to New York and Germany where the clinical trials were taking place, but the cancer was too aggressive.  

Brooke died on 14^th March 2020, at the age of just 11. 

Now Dan is supporting our petition calling on the Government to ring-fence £110 million of current and new funding to kick-start an increase in the national investment in brain tumour research to £35 million a year by 2028.  

He said: “As a family, we believe everything we did helped Brooke. We had 11 months from when she was diagnosed to when she passed away. She was a proper fighter and everything we went through was a battle. I can’t fault the compassion and support from the NHS staff. However, I am angry. Angry that decades have passed and still people are dying from this disease, and yet treatment options for brain tumours aren’t keeping up to date with innovations in other cancers.” 

Sign our petition now and share it far and wide to help us reach 100,000 signatures in the hope of prompting a parliamentary debate: www.braintumourresearch.org/petition  

Related reading: 

• Brooke’s story 
• What are we doing to find a cure for DIPG? 

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