Queen recognizes Sunday Express’s Better Bones campaign with special award | Politics | News

Her Majesty praised our Better Bones campaign and presented us with a special award for our help in putting the devastating disease “on the map”.

At a special event at Clarence House, she described how her own mother, Rosalind Shand, died of osteoporosis.

Queen Camilla is president of the Royal Osteoporosis Society, which has been working with the Sunday Express to introduce simple but life-saving measures to detect and treat the disease across the country.

That’s why the government has pledged to end the postcode lottery for diagnosis and treatment.

The Queen told a small gathering of activists and volunteers: “A big thank you to the Sunday Express… It has really put osteoporosis on the map.”

“All I can say is that I just implore you to keep going because people are reading it and listening and it is making a huge difference to a lot of people who would otherwise go unrecognized.”

She told how her mother “died because back then there was never a diagnosis and old people were just pushed aside.”

She said there was an attitude at the time: “Sorry, there’s nothing we can do about it.”

The Queen added: “Had she lived today, a lot would have been done about it.” It’s thanks to everyone here that so much is being done about osteoporosis and I can’t tell you how much it’s appreciated, not just by me yourself, but by millions of others around the world. So thank you very much.” Sunday Express editor David Wooding received a “special certificate of recognition” in recognition of our Better Bones campaign, which was shortlisted for Campaign of the Year by the Society of Editors.

Our hard-fought battle has resulted in all major parties committing ahead of the election to rolling out “fracture liaison services” across England to prevent the disease from going undetected and having catastrophic consequences.

Craig Jones, chief executive of the ROS, said these “crucial” services were “only available in half of trusts and 90,000 people missed medication every year, leading to a revolving door of fracture patients in hospitals”. The new services are expected to prevent 74,000 outages within five years.

Mr Jones said the Better Bones campaign had inspired change “at the highest political levels”. He said it was both the “first newspaper campaign on osteoporosis” and the “longest-running successful newspaper campaign ever”.

The Sunday Express, he said, was “motivated by the missed opportunities to provide early diagnosis for people with osteoporosis – and wanted to advocate for them”.

Mr Jones said the national attention the Sunday Express brought to the issue was “absolutely groundbreaking for our cause”.

The introduction of the new services aims to prevent 31,000 potentially life-threatening hip fractures.

“With over a quarter of people who break a hip dying in the following year, we expect this bipartisan effort to save 8,000 lives over the same period,” Jones said.

He added: “David and his team have made a strong commitment to a previously neglected and underrepresented cause – until now, when his efforts have increased the level of control and attention to changing and improving the lives of people affected by this disease, have changed.” .

Mr Jones praised the Queen for her work as “one of the world’s best-known champions in the fight against osteoporosis”.

“We are proud to be a cause that is so close to her heart,” he said. “By channeling her own mother’s painful experience of osteoporosis, she has helped millions of people live well and, more importantly, encouraged younger audiences to become more conscious of their bone health .”

Among those attending the special event at Clarence House was Emmy Award-winning actress Susan Hampshire, famous for her role in the 1967 BBC production of The Forsyte Saga. She is a celebrity ambassador for the Royal Osteoporosis Society and has described her own experience with the disease.