It is the social media craze that has swept the globe and now Canberrans who care for people with motor neurone disease have jumped on board the ice-bucket challenge.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Nurses, health professionals and staff from Clare Holland House have joined the legions of people around the world who have thrown buckets of ice over their heads to help raise awareness of MND and funds for research into the debilitating disease.
Motor neurone disease is the name given to a group of diseases where the nerve cells controlling the muscles enabling movement, speech, breathing and swallowing degenerate and die.
Clare Holland House in Barton currently cares for about 26 people with the disease.
The ACT's eminent MND specialist, palliative care consultant Dr Andrew Skeels, said the ice-bucket challenge was a worthwhile cause.
"The loss of function, the unrelenting nature of the disease is very disabling – it affects some fairly basic areas of people's functions," he said.
"It's not only the loss of mobility and hand function, swallowing becomes impaired and there's often great need for dietary support. There's problems with respiratory functions which is obviously very distressing as people get weaker and weaker, and there are cognitive changes that can occur and that's often particularly difficult for families to see someone becoming not only physically a different person but mentally they become a different person as well."
MND Australia says 47,000 challenge donors have helped raise more than $2 million for people living with MND in Australia. The organisation says every dollar donated will be allocated to research.
Clare Holland House raised nearly $400 as of Friday and they nominated Calvary Bethlehem in Melbourne, the Canberra Community Rehabilitation team and the neurosurgical and neurology wards at Canberra Hospital to take part in the challenge.
Specialist community palliative care service manager Jane Etchells said it was great to see so many Clare Holland House staff participate in the challenge.
"We want to get the news out there about MND because it is such an awful disease and ... we just want to get behind it to find a cure, that would be the ultimate thing," she said.
Dr Skeels said unless more was known about the disease, a cure would not be found.
To donate to MND Australia, visit mndaust.asn.au.
