The Hemispherectomy Foundation Australia is a not-for-profit incorporated organisation and a registered health promotion charity.

This site is operated by a growing group of parents and friends of children who have undergone the radical surgery known as hemispherectomy to remove or disconnect half their brain, literally, in order to attempt to rid them of the intractable seizures that plague their lives. Our children have all undergone this surgery, as a result of a variety of neurological conditions: Rasmussen’s encephalitis, Sturge Weber syndrome, hemimegalencephaly, cortical dysplasia, infantile stroke to name some. Our children are all different, and their outcomes after surgery have varied. One thing they all have in common, however, is parents who understand the benefits of contact with other ‘hemi families’. This is the reason for our site.

Our organisation is about HOPE. We hope to keep ourselves, and the wider community, up to date with current research;  we hope to reach out to newly impacted families; we hope to raise funds to support research into the conditions that necessitate hemispherectomy surgery; we hope to have fun and make new friends at a once a year big ‘hemi family’ get-together. Our message is that there absolutely is Hope in One Hemisphere. We focus on the positives as well as offer advice and comfort for those families experiencing the hard times.  We are dedicated to providing support to children and families both after hemispherectomy surgery and before.

Hopefully, this site will help hemi families to keep in touch, foster friendships and awareness, swap ideas and equipment, share information that will help our children at school, and attract the advice of health professionals. We are linked to our sister organisation in the USA and this helps us widen the contacts, expand our resources and ensure all of the information we provide to you is the latest, most evidence-based thinking.

Hopefully, this site will one day, be no longer needed.  Hopefully, the surgery will become a thing of the past.  In order to make that a reality, we have joined to create our foundation.  We welcome you to our site, whether you be an affected family member, a relative, a health professional, a potential sponsor.  We hope you can find here what you need, and leave understanding, as we do, that there is Hope in One Hemisphere.