Telethon and Italrugby team up against rare genetic diseases

The Telethon Foundation and the Italian Rugby Federation are teaming up once morest rare genetic diseases with a communication campaign to allocate the 5×1000 to scientific research in this area entitled «Your 5×1000 to the Telethon Foundation: together, we can reach the goal». The Telethon Foundation campaign was just presented with a press conference at the Olympic Stadium in Rome.

The campaign, activated from May to September, will feature five players from the Italian national team: Michele Lamaro, Tommaso Menoncello, Lorenzo and Niccolò Cannone and Ignacio Brex. Together with them, Carlo, an 11 year old boy from Treviso suffering from SMA, spinal muscular atrophy.

«The collaboration between the Telethon Foundation and the Italian Rugby Federation – underlined the President of the Telethon Foundation Luca Cordero di Montezemolo – is based on the common values ​​that link sport and research, or rather on the awareness of facing important challenges on a daily basis that can only be won thanks to team play. Because, in rugby as in research, no one wins alone. We only get to the goal by fighting together, for the good of the team, for the good of the community. Only together is it possible to win the game once morest rare genetic diseases. And the FIR is a very valuable partner to do this with.”

The partnership between the Telethon Foundation and the Italian Rugby Federation was signed in 2019 through a memorandum of understanding which allows the Fir and national athletes to be directly and actively involved in occasional public fundraising campaigns and in disease awareness activities rare genetics organized by the Telethon Foundation.

For Marzio Innocenti, President of the Italian Rugby Federation, «the partnership with Telethon represents a flagship for our social responsibility strategies and we are happy to be able to offer a concrete contribution to research on rare genetic diseases by wearing the shirt of our national team, the symbol that unites the entire Italian sporting world, at the service of the 5×1000 campaign of the Telethon Foundation. This collaboration makes me proud as President of the Italian Rugby Federation and increasingly confident in the evolution of research as a doctor.”