HOLD AN EVENT or GET SPONSORED and raise money for the OLIVER FISHER SPECIAL CARE BABY TRUST. Here's why it's such a worthwhile cause: Oliver Fisher Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in Medway Maritime Hospital in Kent started as a Special Care Baby Unit with 2 special care cots in the maternity wing in All Saints Hospital by Dr Oliver Fisher in 1983. The unit now has a total of 22 cots including 8 intensive care cots. It cares for babies born prematurely or who are sick and need the intensive care that only a highly specialized facility, skilled staff and sophisticated equipment can provide to ensure their survival. Each year, about 400 babies are admitted to the Unit, 100 or more requiring ventilation. Over the period that the Unit has been open, we have increased the number of babies we have looked after and also increased the percentage, who have survived and survived well in order to lead a good quality of life. Not only do we serve the population of the Medway towns the biggest population within South East Thames, but we also take babies from the surrounding districts of Dartford and Gravesend, Maidstone, Tunbridge Wells and often go as far a field as Ashford, Dover and Hastings in order to help very small babies survive. The government and primary care trusts provide the unit and pays for the staff but the money available to equip and staff a large intensive care unit is never sufficient. Because of the concern and understanding of parents whose babies have been treated in this Unit and the medical staff who have treated them, the Oliver Fisher Special Care Baby Trust (OFSCBT) was formed to raise additional funds to purchase the very expensive and high tech equipment necessary to enable the Unit to continue to enhance its high standard of medical care for the babies.
For all those who have lost a baby:
The fact that you are reading this means we share something in common. There is nothing we can say to take away the feelings of pain, anger, disbelief or dispair that you may be feeling. We are so sorry for your loss.
We are asking for the help of all those who have lost a baby in a hospital special care unit to tell us about your experiences. All parents who suffer a neonatal loss deserve the level of care that we recieved (see Who Are We page) and all other support available should be more readily available. We want to know what was good, what was bad and what could have been better about the care you received from the baby unit where your baby died. Please email your story to us. See the Contact Us link for our email address. We will treat all information we receive with the strictest confidence and only use any personal or hospital name information with your permission.
Our long term aim is to produce an information leaflet that will be widely available in all special care units to all parents containing advice and information on all the difficult subjects they face when their baby has died.