Royal Osteoporosis Society event
In February, Hospital Saturday Fund team members John Greenwood and Louise Kent attended the event for the Royal Osteoporosis Society’s (ROS) re-launch at the Science Museum in London.
A president of the charity since 2001 and patron since 1997, The Duchess of Cornwall was an honorary guest and speaker at the event, where she spoke movingly about her late mother, Rosalind Shand, who lost her fight to the bone disease in 1994.
The Duchess also unveiled the new logo for the charity that has been given the Queen’s seal of approval towards permitting the use of ‘Royal’ in its new name. Upon the unveiling, the Duchess reflected upon her mother’s battle with Osteoporosis, saying that she was in fact the same age that she is now when she passed away. The Dutchess then went on to acknowledge the shift in perception about the disease in the past 25 years, saying that it was “never discussed, rarely diagnosed, and always attributed to old people”. She wishes that her mother was here today to see what could’ve been done, and is making educating her children and grandchildren on the disease a top priority; “if we can just tell them how important it is to eat the right things, to take exercise – these will go a long way to keeping their bones healthy”.
The event also recognised the ROS’s launch of the world’s first Osteoporosis and Bone Research Academy, which endeavours to unite clinicians and academics in the field towards finding a cure for the disease.
ROS chief executive, Claire Severgnini highlighted some of the obvious signs of osteoporosis on the night also, saying that losing height with age and back pain could be pointing at a possibility of having the disease. “That’s why we want to encourage everybody to start to look after their bones, no matter how old they are”, Claire said.
In 2020, Claire has said that ROS will be “the first bone charity in the world to build an osteoporosis research roadmap charting the route to a cure and giving hope to future generations”.
To find out more visit https://theros.org.uk/
