The grounds of St Patrick's College will become a sea of purple on Friday when the 4kms for 4EK aims to raise awareness about meningococcal disease.
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The walk will be the first official event since the 4EK Foundation, established after the death of Ballarat teen Emma-Kate McGrath from meningococcal in 2017, gained official charity status and a board of directors was appointed.
President Lucy Loader said the foundation's new status would not change its goal - to raise awareness of meningococcal disease and the importance of being vaccinated against all five strains of the disease.
"From the early days we started we just really wanted to focus on awareness and spreading the message about meningococcal and vaccination, then it moved it to people asking can they donate, can they do fundraising and we did that and raised quite a lot of money which we divvied out to various meningococcal foundations," Ms Loader said.
"Then Abby (McGrath - Emma-Kate's mother) and I decided we would like to focus more on helping people that have had children survive meningococcal but have suffered disability.
"Then we got talking about where we wanted to go longer term, and we were both pretty busy working full time and with families, so we decided to look in to making it a proper registered charity, went through that process and elected a board."
4EK is also fighting, along with other meningococcal organisations, for meningococcal vaccinations to be available for everyone.
After the coroner's inquiry in to Emma-Kate's death and other meningococcal cases the government added the vaccines for meningococcal A, C, W and Y strains for children aged 12 months and teenagers.
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"There's still this big gap so we are pushing really hard to try and get the immunisations on the schedule for everyone. The vaccine for the B strain still isn't on the scheme but it is available through GPs and you have to pay for it, and have the initiative and desire to seek it out."
Ms Loader said participants in Friday's 4kms for 4EK would enjoy a fun evening of walking, awareness, food vans and barbecues, live music, merchandise and giveaways, with the walk taking place at St pat's from 5.30pm.
4EK also last week launched its new website www.4ek.org.au.
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