Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital Foundation 2018 Research Grant Awards and Supporter Recognition Ceremony

The Honourable Dr Steven Miles MP, Minister for Health and Minister for Ambulance Services; Mrs Leona Murphy, Chair of the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital Foundation; Distinguished Guests; Ladies and Gentlemen,

This is now the fourth time I have attended the Royal Brisbane Hospital Foundation’s Research Awards, and I can honestly say that I still find it as inspiring as I did in 2015, when I was honoured to be named as your Patron.

There can be no more vital work, no crucial endeavour that is more in the public interest than medical research, and at the outset, I wish to commend the Royal Brisbane Women’s Hospital Foundation for its unswerving commitment to supporting high-quality research with the potential to save lives and improve the quality of life.

Likewise, I express my sincere thanks to each and every one of the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital “Royal Family”, those individual donors, businesses, large organisations and community groups whose generous and ongoing financial support makes this research possible.

You are the foundation stone of the scientific strength of the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital, and your generosity empowers and emboldens our finest scientific minds.

Our entire community is the enduring beneficiary of your donations and sponsorship, and on their behalf, as Governor of Queensland, I thank you.

Since the inception of the Brisbane Hospital in 1876, when Dr Joseph Bancroft discovered the cause of the disease filiariasis, to the founding of the Brisbane Women’s Hospital 80 years ago, to the more recent development of the fetal oximetry system for prevention of brain injury in babies caused by lack of oxygen in labour, the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital has been at the vanguard of research to advance treatment methods and improve outcomes for patients.

The 36 research grants announced today, funded out of the investment pool of $2.9 million, are incredibly exciting and diverse, spanning diagnosis and treatment of diseases and disorders of almost every known type. The answers to the questions posed by these researchers have enormous potential to ease human suffering and to prolong life.

As Patron, I’m exceptionally proud of this latest down-payment on the medical advances to be made at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital. I speak on behalf of the whole community when I congratulate the award recipients and wish them every possible success in their work.