Participants take a group photo after the walk.Athena Hellmann and Alina Bharwani of Canadian International School and Adrian Lim of South Island School organised a walk on the Peak on March 14 to highlight the Joshua Hellmann Foundation, a Hong Kong organisation that advances the prevention, treatment, and diagnosis of rare diseases.
The three students volunteer for the foundation. Aware that few students in the city know about rare diseases, which affect as few as 1 in 10,000 people, the three students organised the walk to help raise awareness of these diseases, for which diagnosis, prevention, and treatment are often very difficult.
Their hard work, which involved promotion of the event on Facebook and applying for police permission, was a success: more than 50 students from the two schools and others took part.
The 3.5km walk on Lugard Road tested the body and the mind, because the walkers also had to do a quiz on rare diseases, so that they could know better understand what the sufferers are going through.