Dr Bill Lamb started a campaign to run 500 miles to raise funds for insulin pumps to help diabetes patients. Now, 1,700 miles on, he won't stop until he's succeeded he tells Sharon Griffiths.

IN the past year, Dr Bill Lamb has run 1,700 miles and raised over £45,000 to provide vital equipment for children suffering from diabetes. But if he worked in Portsmouth, Sheffield or Leeds, he could have sat at home with his feet up. Those health authorities - and many others - provide insulin pumps for children as a matter of course. They're standard issue in the US and most of Europe. But up here, the Primary Care Trusts are still thinking about it - which is why Dr Lamb can be seen pounding up the hill from Bishop Auckland at least three times a week.

Insulin pumps can change the lives of children who use them. They provide a constant trickle of insulin to stabilise blood sugar levels. Instead of maybe three injections a day, it means children have one every three days. It reduces the risk of hypoglycaemic attacks and reduces the risk of long-term complications.

But it's more than that. "Parents whose children have had the pumps say the difference is dramatic," says Dr Lamb. "'We feel we've got our daughter back,' said one. Another mother told me that after her little boy was diagnosed with diabetes, he cried every day. Since he's been using the pump he hasn't cried at all. Diabetes is controllable by daily injections but the pumps make a real difference."

Over 350 children in County Durham have diabetes, with around 40 new cases each year. As he likes children to be involved in managing their treatment, Dr Lamb organised for a few children to go to Sweden some time ago to see how childhood diabetes was managed there.

"They came back and did a brilliant presentation. Fabulous. And among the things they asked for were these pumps," he says.

Insulin pumps are a classic case of healthcare by postcode lottery. Some health authorities provide them automatically. Others, such as those in the North-East, don't although, jolted into action by Dr Lamb's campaign, some are now considering it. The pumps cost around £2,500 to buy, last for around eight years and need another £1,000 a year to run. So every pump bought also has to have a decent wodge of money for running costs. NICE, the National Institute for Clinical Excellence, recommends that children who would benefit from them should have them.

Dr Lamb started by writing letters - including a real scorcher to the Secretary of State for Health. "There is something ironic about children living in the constituency of the Prime Minister in the fourth richest country in the world dependent on a middle-aged paediatrician running for charity to provide them with an essential item of medical equipment," he wrote. "I know of nowhere else in the country that has such an appallingly poor provision for children's diabetes care."

To counteract the explanation that there is no money available, he added: "There are now many instances in the new Primary Care Trusts of ten people doing the work previously carried out by one in the days of the Health Authority. For example, if just two of the five PCTs in County Durham and Darlington were to merge, it would release hundreds and thousands of pounds, more than enough to fund insulin pumps for every child and adult with diabetes who wanted one. The funds are available if the will is there."

And as well as writing, he started running. "I had done some running and wanted to run a marathon before I was 50. I was 49, so time was getting close. I remembered that Proclaimers song, 'I would walk 500 miles'. And that seemed a good target. I thought I would run 500 miles to raise money."

Encouraged by his eldest son, he started training and did the Great North Run. "If it hadn't been for him, I couldn't have done it. When I first started running I thought I was going to die," says Dr Lamb.

A friend, an IT expert, did a website for him and gradually the word spread. The 500-mile target was reached and Dr Lamb just carried on running.

The website logs his running totals, overtaking cyclists and being chased by dogs in the rain. It also gives lots of information on children and diabetes and details the flood of donations. There have been big donations such as those from the Rotary Club or Councillor Malcolm Iveson, whose year as mayor of Great Aycliffe raised over £12,00, but also scores of other donations from hairdressers and shops, pubs and clubs and private individuals, who have taken the children's cause to heart.

"It's all snowballed and people have been great," says Dr Lamb.

It's a tremendous achievement. And it all takes time - the running three or four times a week, maintaining the website, writing the thank you letters, turning up at events. "If someone's going to the effort of raising money, the least I can do is show up if I can," he says.

Then there's the small matter of the day job as consultant paediatrician at Bishop Auckland General Hospital, including some work at Newcastle and evenings and weekends on call. And his family - four almost grown-up children "who are all very embarrassed, and perhaps a bit proud, of the whole thing". Then, of course, there's his long-suffering wife Colette, who has been "wonderfully supportive".

There are some bonuses, too, for all that running. "It is wonderful to feel so fit," says Dr Lamb. There have been the inevitable creaks and strains of course. "But when I was doing the Keswick to Barrow run, I got to 27 miles and I was doing it with a great grin on my face because it was such a fabulous feeling. A real high," he says.

Yet there are downsides too. As the campaign rolls successfully on - 1,715 miles, £45,000, seven pumps supplied, eight more in the pipeline - Dr Lamb is not entirely comfortable with it all and the attendant publicity. "I'm not by nature a stirrer," he says, "but when I take something on, I commit to it. And until every child who needs one has an insulin pump, I'll just keep on running. To me, it just seems part of my job."

* Dr Bill Lamb is based at Bishop Auckland General Hospital. More information on his campaign is available at www.run500miles.com.

* On Wednesday June 16, there will be an event at Bishop Auckland Town Hall to raise money for Dr Lamb's campaign, including a fun quiz, promises auction and grand raffle. More details and entry forms are available from Bishop Auckland Town Hall, tel: (01388) 602610. Entries in by Tuesday please.