Friends with their hearts set on finding a cure for a little girl’s disease are ready to face a gruelling obstacle course to fund research into her condition.

Four-year-old Ava Carter, who lives in Fir Tree Walk in Enfield Town, suffers from Rett Syndrome, which surfaces in young girls just after they start walking and talking and drags their development backwards. 

The condition means, Ava, who attends Waverley Special School in The Ride, can no longer communicate and is likely to require 24-hour care when she reaches adulthood.

Eighteen friends of Ava and her mother Laura are determined to fight the condition, and are taking on a tough 12-mile obstacle course designed by special military forces on Sunday, May 5, to raise £10,000 for research.

The group, many from Enfield, have already raised more than £35,000 for charities Rett Syndrome Research UK and Cure Rett, and hope a cure will be found in Ava’s lifetime.

Family friend Emma Wells, who signed up for the Tough Mudder challenge under their team name Awareness4Ava, said: “We signed up without exactly realising what it was properly, but it’s fine.

“We have been training for the last two months and we’ve been told we just need to be able to do the mileage. It will be good fun as much as anything.”

She said she has no plans to stop raising money for the charity until a treatment is found, and is already planning to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania next year to help Ava.

The group organised a masked ball last year, which raised more than £14,500 for Rett research.

To visit their charity page, click here.