Delivery to Dublin – Teaming up to transport milk donations to neonatal babies overseas
We’re incredibly proud of the combined efforts seen at our Women’s Hospital Milk Bank after teaming up to deliver four litres of donor breast milk to sick babies on neonatal units overseas at the Coombe Women’s Hospital in Ireland, Dublin. Earlier this month, our donor breast milk has travelled over 250 miles to support babies in need of the essential anti-infective properties found in human breast milk to aid recovery.
When hospitals are in need across the country, our hospital amongst many others, are on hand to support where we can, to ensure we share the load. Standing in for Cheshire Hospital, our Milk Bank and volunteer Midland Freewheelers blood bikers were able to link up with Mersey and Cheshire Blood Bikes to deliver the milk to Coombe Women’s Hospital thanks to P & O Ferries (Irish Sea) who helped us to transport the milk overseas to Dublin.
Marina Rudge, our Milk Bank Practitioner said: “We’re so proud of the national effort to transport milk across the country and beyond to support sick babies across different neonatal wards. Our blood bikers are so precious to us
in this process of delivering milk under time pressures. They volunteer their time to support us – they’re able to get through traffic quickly, delivering other important medical equipment, medication and essentials to support patients and families across the country.
Being able to deliver to Dublin to support Coombe Hospital feels brilliant – to be able to support our NHS colleagues across seas, similar to how we supported during Covid-19, just shows how collaborative we can be in working together to support premature and sick babies.”
Dave Fullwood, aged 67 from the Blood Bike team said: “All I can say is that it’s an absolute privilege to be able to do this – it really becomes a passion and a positive challenge to deliver to families in need. I’ve been doing this for 11 years now – I thought I’d put my motorbike qualification to use and do something meaningful and get to ride a good bike. It’s really great to work with the team, it’s like a big family – the Dublin delivery was like a big relay. All teams contributed and we worked so well together.”
From the mother’s that generously donate their milk to us, like Laura, to Gayle and Marina, our Milk Bank champions at the Birmingham Women’s Hospital; to brilliant Blood Biker Dave who packs it away and travels the M6 to reach the speedy Mersey and Cheshire Blood Bikers, onto the P&O Ferry across the Irish Sea, carried by the blue light bike through Dublin - to the sick babies in need of our milk.
It is a privilege to be able to support our patients and families across our hospitals across NHS through joined-up working. We’d like to say a big thank you to all of our mother’s, milk bank colleagues, blood bikers, ferry transport teams and beyond who play their role in transport our donor milk.