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Support the King's COVID Response Fund

17 April 2020

King’s world leading researchers, academics, clinicians and staff are at the forefront of our battle against COVID. You can support this life saving research and the mental wellbeing of our NHS staff and nursing and medical students by helping to spread the word or by making a donation today.

Support the King’s COVID Response Fund

At King’s we are committed to using our expertise and resources in support of the international response to COVID during one of the most challenging times we have collectively faced.

Our research teams, across a number of disciplines, are currently working to tackle the impact of the outbreak in four keys areas:

Researching life-saving treatments for COVID
Support for our incredible NHS staff and their mental health
A global response to help developing countries fight the outbreak
Help for students facing financial hardship as a result of the epidemic

King's fosters a unique culture of encouragement, support and collaboration, forming King’s Health Partners with three successful NHS Foundation Trusts: Guy’s and St Thomas’, King’s College Hospital and South London and Maudsley. Bringing together academics and clinicians in this way ensures we can effectively address the major health crisis our society is currently facing and puts us in a unique position to be a part of the global response to the virus, but we need your support.

London is now at the epicentre of the UK epidemic, with the boroughs of Lambeth and Southwark at the heart. We work across multiple hospitals in the centre of London, and in densely populated and multicultural communities. This, coupled with our strengths in areas such as virology, immunology, biomedical engineering and mental health, has placed us in a strong position to find answers and solutions to the issues we are currently facing, to impact both communities within the UK and globally.

Image courtesy of the Francis Crick Institute, Janie Airey.

I am completely inspired by the selfless and immediate responses of young researchers who have put their own projects to one side and applied themselves to investigating COVID. They deserve our support and recognition– Professor Adrian Hayday, Peter Gorer Department of Immunobiology

How your support will make a difference

A large number of King’s researchers, academics, clinicians and students are collaborating between departments and with other institutions to get the best minds together to lead the UK’s response to this global challenge. Your support will ensure they have the resources and materials they need to make progress faster.

Our community is also leading the effort to support our exceptional NHS and healthcare workers. Many staff members have gone back to their medical professions and large numbers of final year nursing and medical students have been moved to the front line to ensure that every patient is looked after. Your support will help fund research into mental wellbeing to help protect our NHS workers at this testing time.

King’s is also looking beyond our own community in London and the UK. Together, we were at the heart of the international response to the 2014 Ebola epidemic. Then and now, our world-leading experts stand ready to support marginalised communities across Africa. They are working on ways to support the millions of people who live in countries without a functioning universal healthcare system. Your support will ensure that people suffering from COVID will be given the best possible treatment, no matter which country they live in.

At this worrying time, it is also important that we ensure the wellbeing of our students is cared for. We have seen a significant increase in applications to the Hardship Fund, and anticipate this continuing for the foreseeable future. Many are struggling to pay their bills due to loss of part-time work, or making the switch to online learning due to lack of a computer or internet connection. Your support will ensure no student is left at a disadvantage.