The Friends of Savernake Hospital and the Community have donated £10,000 to the Great Western Hospital Brighter Futures’ £2.9million campaign to bring radiotherapy to the Swindon hospital. Currently many Marlborough area cancer patients needing radiotherapy have to make a daily round trip to Oxford of anything up to 92 miles.
Friends’ Chairman Janet Louth presented the cheque to Brighter Futures’ Head of Fundraising, Jennifer Green, at Savernake Hospital on Friday (July 24.) Also present were Friends’ trustees Joan Davies and Pat Harper and the group’s administrator Trudi Granger.
The donation comes a matter of days after Brighter Futures announced that their appeal had already raised £100,000 – now the total is £110,000 and rising all the time.
A very healthy way to raise money for this appeal, which has such a strong link to the Marlborough area, comes on September 20 with their Ride for Radiotherapy. You can ride 30, 70 or 100 sponsored miles around Wiltshire. The 70 mile route is equivalent to the journey to Oxford from GWH to receive each session of radiotherapy – on average patients received 40 treatments and some have more.
For the slightly less energetic fundraisers, you can show your support with the appeal wristbands. You can get one or, if you can, display a whole box of them by emailing Fundraising@gwh.nhs.uk
You can donate to the Better Futures Radiotherapy Appeal by texting SWIN29 followed by your donation amount (£5 or £10) to 70070 or visit their website for further ways to donate.
The committee of the Friends of Savernake Hospital and the Community have been busy making grants. They recently gave £1,150 to Savernake Hospital’s Ailesbury Ward for dementia aids (such as large ‘scrapbooks’ depicting fashions, foods and brand labels from the 1940s through to the 1970s), a communal television and electric fans.
And they donated £2,000 for a mobile ECG machine for the Community Nurses based at Savernake Hospital. This can be used in patients’ homes so saving time, money and the stress of getting to a hospital.
The Friends are considering making another donation to the Brighter Futures’ Radiotherapy Appeal in the next financial year.
Big changes at Marlborough with all still to play for with a vist to Purton this weekend (2)
