Little Lives, Big Journeys...

Protecting the brains of babies who have suffered a lack of oxygen at birth

This charity is very close to our hearts. Baby Leo (pictured below) was able to benefit from brain cooling after suffering from a lack of oxygen at birth, however not all newborns receive this treatment in a suitable time frame.

You can help to change this with us…

The Little Lives, Big Journeys Appeal, co-ordinated by Leicester Hospitals Charity is supporting the Centre Neonatal Transport team to raise money to buy cooling equipment for their ambulances.

The Centre Neonatal Transport team is a shared service and has a joint base in Leicester and Nottingham at the Leicester Royal Infirmary, Queens Medical Centre and Nottingham City Hospital.

The service moves very sick babies from one of 14 different maternity units in the Midlands to one of the three specialist intensive care units which are in Leicester, Nottingham or Coventry depending on which one can accommodate at that time.

Some babies who are sick post birth, due to lack of oxygen, need to be 'cooled' within 6 hours to avoid further complications including brain damage. The 'cooling' process is only available in the specialist intensive care units but not in the ambulances. Therefore if a baby is born and needs to be transported to one of the units, the subsequent delay in starting cooling can be catastrophic. To address this delay we want to get both of the ambulances fitted with the cooling equipment.

With this appeal Leicester Hospital plan to:

o    Buy equipment to deliver cooling during transport

o    Agree a service plan with the equipment manufacturer, to keep the equipment running properly.

o    Buy supplies of cooling jackets. These are used just for one baby, so we will need to keep buying these regularly.

This will equip Centre with two cooling machines, one each for each base.

Leicester Hospital needs to raise £60,000 to make this happen so please show your support by making a donation.

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