The third annual Great Strides 5K Walk benefiting the Mississippi Chapter of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation will be Saturday at Copiah-Lincoln Community College — Natchez.

Registration will begin at 8:30 a.m., and the walk will start at 9 a.m. Copiah-Lincoln Community College’s Respiratory Care Technology Program is sponsoring this year’s event, along with a new sponsor, the Natchez Traced Branch of Foresters.

Cystic fibrosis is a life-threatening inherited disease that affects the lungs and digestive system.

Right now there is no cure for CF. The CF Foundation’s innovative approach to research has yielded a pipeline of more than 30 potential CF therapies.

Today, people with CF have a life expectancy of approximately 37 years, because of the advances in technologies, medications and procedures discovered through the research sponsored by the CF Foundation. Although these advances have resulted in longer and healthier lives for people with CF, we continue losing many children and young adults to this disease.

Walkers and sponsors are needed! Every day, approximately three babies are born with CF in this country, and every day at least one person with CF dies. Your help is urgently needed to ensure that the rapid pace of CF research continues. The cost of this research continues to escalate as sophisticated, new technologies and therapies must be developed to save these precious lives.

Contact me at 601-446-1277 or by e-mail walt.wilson@colin.edu, if you would like to participate, sponsor a walker or make a donation.

Walt Wilson is the program director for Co-Lin’s Respiratory Care Practitioner Program and a Natchez resident.