Over the past few months, donations to the ALS Association have skyrocketed because of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge™.
Still many are unaware what ALS actually is, how it affects people and what the challenge is for. According to the ALS Association, ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis), often referred to as Lou Gehrig’s Disease, is a progressive neurodegenerative disease affecting the motor neurons going from the brain to the spinal cord and then to the muscles. When these motor neurons die, the brain no longer has the ability to initiate or control muscle movement. Voluntary muscle movement is progressively affected, ultimately leading to paralysis. The disease then affects vital muscle movement in organs such as the heart and lungs, eventually leading to death.
There are three classifications of ALS. The most common, Sporadic, accounts for 90 to 95 percent of all cases of ALS in the U.S. Sporadic ALS can hit anyone at any time.
Although most cases of ALS are diagnosed in people ages 40-70, there are cases of people being diagnosed in their 20s and 30s. 5 to 10 percent of ALS cases are familial, meaning the disease occurs more than once in a family lineage. The third classification of ALS, Guamanian, was observed in Guam and the Trust Territories in the 1950s.
ALS is not contagious and can strike anyone. About 5,600 people in the U.S. are diagnosed each year and it is estimated that 30,000 people in the U.S. have the disease at any one time. Men make up 60 percent of ALS patients in the U.S. and 93 percent of patients, men or women, are Caucasian. Half of all patients live two to three years after diagnosis, while 20 percent live five years or more and up to 10 percent live ten years or more.
There is currently no cure for ALS, although there are several treatments to help slow the effects of the disease.
The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge™ is designed to raise awareness for this terrible disease and to raise money to hopefully find a cure. Last year the ALS Association received $1.9 million in donations from July 29 to Aug. 19. This year, as of Aug. 19, with the help of the Ice Bucket Challenge™ the ALS Association has received $22.9 million in donations.
“Our top priority is acknowledging all the gifts made by donors to The ALS Association,” said Barbara Newhouse, president and CEO of The ALS Association. “We want to be the best stewards of this incredible influx of support. To do that, we need to be strategic in our decision making as to how the funds will be spent so that when people look back on this event in ten and twenty years, the Ice Bucket Challenge™ will be seen as a real game-changer for ALS.”
