In the mid-1970’s the School of Medicine at the University of Southampton recognised the need for funds to support medical research. As a result in 1977, Professor (later Sir) Donald Acheson, Lord Northbrook and others, founded the Southampton and Wessex Medical School Trust: a registered charity with the objects of raising funds to support medical research, education and practice.

Unlike other long-established medical schools such as Oxford, Cambridge and London, the School of Medicine – which had been established four years earlier in 1972 – had no established ‘pot of gold’ from historic endowments or donations received from former students from which bursaries and grants could be supported.

The charity – now Wessex Medical Trust, a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO) – has raised over £20 million in voluntary donations, which has been applied in full by our Trustees to support vital medical research projects.

However, the need is always to do more. To fund research to fight disease; to tackle the underlying causes of ill health in our community; to find better treatments and, potentially, cures for conditions that affect every age group – from infant asthma to Alzheimer’s dementia in our aged population – and many, many more conditions that affect each and every one of us.