Forever Friends Appeal

The Royal United Hospital is the acute district general hospital for Bath and the surrounding towns and villages of North East Somerset, North and West Wiltshire – a very substantial catchment area covering 500,000 people. The Forever Friends Appeal raises funds for state-of-the-art equipment and facilities at the RUH. Our current groundbreaking project is the NICU ‘space to grow’ Campaign which is urgently raising the last £1.5 million to build the UK’s first sustainable Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, caring for premature and sick babies.

Each year our existing NICU provides 24-hour care for approximately 500 such babies. It was built in the ‘70s, is cramped and dark, and there is barely enough space for the essential life-saving equipment, let alone any privacy for stressed parents and families.

The creation of a new NICU has given us a wonderful opportunity to look at the type of Unit we want for the future – caring responsibly for generations of new lives. The building of a new, larger unit with better facilities has only been part of the equation. Environmentally, the method and fabric for the building have been given substantial consideration, not only to reduce our carbon footprint, but also to provide a greatly improved NICU which will benefit the health and wellbeing of our babies and their families by taking a holistic approach to their care.

We are hoping that local companies will want to help us complete the last phase of our fundraising and enable this wonderful new facility to be ready for 2011. With this in mind, we are very much hoping that if your company is planning to send Christmas cards this year, you will consider supporting this Campaign. Every ‘space to grow’ charity card purchased goes a small but significant way to helping us achieve this goal. Thank you for your support.

John Cullum
Chairman

Registered Charity Number 1058323

http://www.foreverfriendsappeal.co.uk/