Tasman Row For FARA

Cairns local Malcolm Skelton is motivated by recent research into his wife Sarah's rare condition, Friedreichs Ataxia. Mal will stop at nothing to find a treatment for his wife and mother to their two children.

Mal is hoping to join an elite group of athletes to cross the Tasman Sea and hopes that you will support him in his journey and help find a cure for Friedreichs.

Sarah has a rare progressive neurological disease called Friedreich Ataxia, a fatal, genetic, neurological, degenerative disease, believed to affect around 1 in 30,000 people.

Friedreich’s is usually diagnosed in childhood or adolescence. As it progresses, it causes complete incapacitation, vision, hearing and speech failure, combined with severe heart disease, scoliosis and diabetes. In later stages, patients usually suffer from cardiac failure in their late thirties. Intellect remains unimpaired. Sarah is thirty eight.
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It is a debilitating, and devastating for their family.

Recent research has identified a number of possible gene therapies for the condition with a number of pharmaceutical companies targeting the condition in their research – aimed at a cure.