Our hearts go out

Sefik was just 41 years old. The dream of this Bosnian refugee, who had fled his war-torn country with his wife and two children, to start a new life in Yeadon, is, sadly, not to be fulfilled.

Last year, this newspaper launched an appeal to pay for Sefik to make special trips to a German clinic for

revolutionary treatment that to all intents and purposes represented his one remaining hope.

Readers responded with a generosity that constantly amazed and overwhelmed Sefik and his wife, Ergina. They found it hard to believe that people who did not know him were prepared to dig deep into their pockets and send money.

Thousands of pounds came in to the fund in donations large and small. Regulars at the Tut 'n' Shive pub at Yeadon held a week-long series of events for the appeal.

Equally heartwarming were the hundreds of individual contributions, many of them anonymous, which arrived at our offices.

These readers will probably never know how grateful Sefik and his family were.

In the end, the treatment, which at one stage seemed to be working, failed to prevent the cancer that had spread from Sefik's lungs to his brain from taking his life.

However, the response from readers, Sefik's trips to Germany, and the treatment itself, were not in vain. As Ergina has said, the treatment gave Sefik six months of a quality of life that he might otherwise not have had.

In addition, doctors will have gained knowledge from the case, which will be to the benefit of other patients.

On behalf of Sefik, Ergina and their children, Maja and Denan, we say 'thank you' to all those who have contributed to the appeal in any way.

And on this sad day, we say to readers: You gave a seriously ill man the chance of recovery; a chance he would otherwise never have had.

You gave him hope where there had been none.

And his family will never forget you.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.