There is nothing more important to a mother than her children. That is why Isabel Gemio works every day to promote research into rare diseases such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy, an ailment that her son Gustavo suffers from. Next February 26, three days before the International Day of Rare Diseases, the journalist organizes a charity event in favor of her foundation. The gala will be held at the Madrid Casino and numerous personalities will participate in a completely selfless manner. She recently opened up about this gala in an interview with ¡Hola!.
As we said, there are several celebrities who will attend the gala selflessly and who will offer their help. This is the case of chef Paco Roncero, who will give away his menu for free, and the singer India Martínez, who will provide the soundtrack to this charity evening, in which there will be many surprises. In total, around 300 guests are expected to attend.
The truth is that organizing a gala of this magnitude is not an easy task, and Gemio has spoken openly about it with the aforementioned media. “We are very few people working and this is really very crazy, but we try to do something every year. Since the pandemic, all foundations are suffering great difficulties in raising money,” he is sincere. “In recent times we have had to stop giving money to four of the seven projects we had. For me that is a huge pain. So, we have to make the effort,” he explained.
Moving forward with something like this is very demanding on an economic level, but as he says, “we always find extraordinary people, companies that are becoming more aware of the problem of minority diseases every day, asking many people and turning to many friends.” . On the other hand, he assures that the main mission of the foundation is to raise money to give to researchers, in order to advance research into some unknown diseases.
“In these 16 years we have managed to allocate two and a half million euros to research thanks to companies, partners, specific contributions, events… For research it is really little, because research is expensive. Despite this, we have managed to put five lines of research are underway, 430 scientific publications, 85 associated research projects, 54 hired researchers, 51 clinical trials and eight patents. In addition, we currently have a scientific committee supported by the CSIC and a network of 105 scientists,” he explains, about the project you are working on.
The communicator has also opened up about how she experienced the diagnosis of her 27-year-old son. “I didn’t face it. I survived. I was like a zombie for a long time. It took me years to accept it. Imagine, it took me ten years to organize and launch the foundation. Well, I think it took me ten years to accept it,” he began by saying. “When I assumed it and accepted what it was, I asked myself what I could do. And the foundation seemed like a good initiative,” she said.
Isabel assured that digesting a diagnosis of these characteristics takes a long time because it is an incurable disease and for which there is no cure. “I want to send a message. For any young couple, for mothers, for fathers, for grandparents who have a child or grandchild with a diagnosis of these characteristics, let them know that science will most likely arrive in time to “they, therefore, support research into these pathologies because it is essential to find a treatment,” he stated then, calling on everyone who can collaborate.
