Erik Jutstra bij start Alpe d’HuZes-week: “We zijn er natuurlijk nog lang niet”

The Alpe d’HuZes week has begun. The first participants and teams from Zeewolde and the region have arrived in France. The mountain is visible, the starting plaza is coming to life, and the first training sessions are over. Over the coming days, everything will revolve around that one goal: raising as much money as possible for cancer research and for a better quality of life for people dealing with this disease. For the Alpe d’HuZes Foundation, this is a special edition. Chairman Erik Jutstra spoke at the start of the week about twenty years of Alpe d’HuZes. In those years, nearly 250 million euros have been raised. Money with which, according to Jutstra, “fantastically beautiful things” have been done. The official opening on Sunday evening with the lighting of the candles remains a goosebumps moment for him. “That is when you are actually very close to why we do it all. And that is, after all, helping to rid the world of this terrible disease.” Jutstra also made it clear that the money remains necessary. According to him, important steps have been taken together with KWF, including in immunotherapy and research that allows prostate cancer to be detected and treated more effectively. Survival rates have increased, and the quality of life during and after treatments has also improved. But Alpe d’HuZes is not finished yet. “We are, of course, still a long way off,” said Jutstra. According to him, the strength of the event lies precisely in the fact that people can process grief there and draw hope from the sense of togetherness on the mountain. read more at: www.lokaleomroepzeewolde.nl