The Addison's Disease Self-Help Group needs your support to extend its education video series about emergency treatment and adrenal crisis prevention. The injection videos show how to prepare an emergency injection and use it safely, with clear close-up sequences filmed with the charity's lead endocrine nurse adviser, Phillip Yeoh of The London Clinic. 

Rather than charge people to view these instructions in a time of need, the trustees are making all the charity's injection video resources free-to-public on the ADSHG website. The adrenal crisis prevention videos can be found in What to do in an emergency: www.addisons.org.uk/emergency  Please help us with the project funding we need to fully recoup our costs and develop further educational resources.

The video series includes background interviews with ADSHG members who have successfully used the emergency injection themselves, and with the Chair of our clinical advisory panel, Prof John Wass, plus a snappy set of tips and reminders on how to maintain your injection kit.  The Society for Endocrinology generously provided a small grant that enabled us to kickstart this project. Now we need your help to recoup all costs, prepare any necessary updates on the existing materials, for example as available drug brands change, and develop further videos in this educational series. 

Every year, an average of around 30 people in England and Wales die from adrenal crisis, undertreated or undiagnosed Addison's (Office of National Statistics, Deaths registered in England and Wales, table 5.4).  Almost all of these deaths were avoidable deaths, where an emergency injection of hydrocortisone could have saved a life.  Help us to make deaths in adrenal crisis a thing of the past, and support our education video appeal.

Thirty deaths a year may sound like  a small number, but is a concerningly high proportion of the number of people living with this rare condition. It is the equivalent of around 10% of new Addison's diagnoses each year. If the same proportion of people died from undertreated asthma attacks, then the death toll from asthma would be 12 - 13 times what it is, and would reach 16,000 a year instead of the current 1200. The required emergency medical response for both acute asthma and adrenal crisis is the same: high dose injected hydrocortisone.

Emergency preparedness can save lives, please donate today.