Club to host event for children and young people with sickle cell disorder

The Club is set to host an event with London hospitals, North Middlesex, University College London Hospital and Whittington Health at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, offering support and help for children and young people living with sickle cell.

Sickle cell is the most common inherited single gene disorder in the UK and affects primarily people of black African and black Caribbean ethnicity. Children and young people with sickle cell can face a multitude of acute and chronic complications that can occur from early childhood.

The event will be hosted at the stadium on Saturday 25 June and will provide families with advice and health promotion as well as enabling hospitals to directly support children and young people in north London, who are disproportionately impacted by sickle cell.

Alongside play areas for young children, exciting activities and entertainment including magicians and face painters, there will be a panel of health experts, inspirational adults living with the disorder and more.

Since opening its doors in 2019, Tottenham Hotspur Stadium has offered a range of support for NHS services. This includes transforming a major section of the stadium building to enable it to host North Middlesex Hospital’s Women’s Outpatient Services during the COVID-19 pandemic, ensuring that vital maternity and antenatal care services were uninterrupted. Over 42,000 outpatient appointments took place. The Club’s basement car park also played host to COVID-19 testing for NHS staff while mass vaccination clinics took place at the stadium at the height of the vaccination roll-out with a total of 9,000 people receiving a vaccine.

Alongside one of the stadium’s mass vaccination clinics last year, the Club also hosted an event in our NFL locker room aimed at increasing blood donations to aid the treatment of sickle cell as part of a national appeal to support treatment of the disease.

Donna-Maria Cullen, Executive Director at Tottenham Hotspur, said: “We are delighted to open our doors once again to the NHS and host this hugely important event. Since opening our stadium we have been determined to ensure it acts as a civic building and community hub for a range of activities. We know that sickle cell disorder is particularly prominent in our local community which makes this event even more important. This partnership with London hospitals enables us to build on our long-standing support for local NHS services and we are looking forward to hosting families from across the local area.”