Spire Leeds Hospital is donating much-needed medical equipment and supplies for a Yorkshire Aid Convoy leaving for Romania on 1st March.
This is the second year running that Spire Leeds Hospital has donated goods to benefit Romanian children’s homes, schools, and a hospital in Sfantu Gheorghe, Transylvania. The convoy of five trucks driven by Yorkshire Aid Convoy volunteers, will undertake the nine day, 3,500 kilometre round trip to deliver almost £2 million worth of goods, including clothes and furniture donated by Yorkshire companies and organisations.
Spire physiotherapist, Judith High, has collected items over the past year for the annual convoy. Materials range from bandages and crutches to nebulisers and resuscitation equipment.
The hospital has also donated televisions, furniture and surplus equipment from the wards, which became available when new replacements were made.
Judith says: “We are really pleased to get involved in this great cause. Yorkshire Aid Convoy is a local charity and it’s one that targets medical supplies that are in great need due the poorly equipped hospitals and the state of health care in Romania.”
Leeds businessman, Mark Murphy, founded Yorkshire Aid Convoy, a registered charity, in April 2002. Mark says: “We are staffed by volunteers who even pay their own expenses to make the trip, this ensures that one hundred percent of aid donations goes directly to people in need.
“We are grateful for the help from Spire because the hospitals in Romania have very basic equipment and the doctors there are doing the best they can with what they have available,” adds Mark. “We are pleased we can help out with the items they are desperately short of and Spire makes that possible.”
The staff at Spire Leeds Hospital has an impressive track record of raising money for charity, having recently donated £1,000 to the Leeds General Infirmary heart research fund. It has also raised the funds for software to enable old heart scans to be transferred onto CDs to allow comparison with new scan results.