The Multiple Sclerosis Therapy Centre in Canterbury has been chosen as our charity of the year for 2010.

It will receive the full backing of this newspaper and kmfm, highlighting its work and fundraising projects.

It has launched a £1 million appeal for a new purpose-built centre.

About 50 people a week in the UK are diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and there are 1,000 sufferers in east Kent.

And as demand for its services increases, the MS Centre in Canterbury is struggling to cope in its prefabricated building, which is 25 years old.

It desperately needs a larger, purpose-built space so it can provide a bigger physio room, a gym, better day area, more therapy rooms, and possibly a hydrotherapy pool.

And through hard work from all people involved in the centre, from sufferers to staff and volunteers, £200,000 has already been raised towards a £1 million appeal for the new building. The centre, a registered charity, has been looking for a suitable site in Canterbury for 10 years, until recently without success.

But now it has been given a 125-year lease on land next to its building and hopes to put in a planning application early in the new year.

Centre chairman Tony Meire said: "We need to keep the centre going while the new one is built as our members can’t do without its services.

"Once we have planning permission we can go to the Lottery and major funds for help with the cost, and since we have a site and have already raised £200,000, I do not think we shall have a problem.

"In addition to more space and better therapies, the new centre will also provide a nicer environment, with a garden, conservatory and sitting out area, so people can come along to meet others socially."

The Canterbury MS centre has 230 members and this is increasing by between 10 and 20 per cent a year because of the demand for its therapies.

Essential

Included in those are the services of a free counsellor, who suffers from MS herself.

Mr Meire said: "It is absolutely essential for people to have access to a specially trained counsellor, especially when they are newly diagnosed, and ours knows exactly what people are going through."

The centre also offers advice from three MS nurses, holds clinics with bowel and bladder nurses once a month, and a nutritionist comes in regularly.

There is a neuro-physiotherapist and plenty of support and advice for sufferers and their carers and families.

MS usually strikes between the ages of 20 and 40, though the youngest member in Canterbury was an 18-year-old student at the University of Kent.

Symptoms vary and it is more prevalent in women than men. The cause is unknown and there is no cure.

One of the therapies which the centre offers is a large hyperbaric oxygen chamber which can take up to 10 people.

They spend time breathing in 100 per cent oxygen, which helps those with other ailments as well as MS, including stroke, leg ulcers, sports injuries, cerebral palsy, problem wounds, ME, fractures and many more.

Centre manager Karen
Middlemiss said: "They are a great bunch of people who come here and it is a positive and upbeat environment, and very supportive, too.

"If there are MS sufferers who have not been here before, we’d like them to come along and see if they can be helped."

The centre is open from 9.30am to 4pm each Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday for people to drop in for company, advice or to use the therapies.

New visitors should call first on 01227 470876 so Mrs Middlemiss
can spend some time with them.