Marlborough Rotary Club pledges continued support for mobile chemo unit
Rotary President Paul Cowan presents Hope for Tomorrow's Rosa Woodley with the chequePaul Cowan, President of the Marlborough and District Rotary Club, has visited the Hope For Tomorrow mobile chemotherapy unit at its local base at the Great Western Hospital, Swindon to hand over a cheque for £900.
This mobile unit with its complement of highly-skilled chemotherapy nurses travels to Marlborough’s Savernake Hospital (as well as to Malmesbury) to bring chemotherapy to the patients, so they do not need to travel long distances to a major hospital.
Marlborough Rotary Club has been supporting this project from its outset. Several other Rotarians joined Paul at the presentation, and all were impressed by the facilities the unit offers to both the nursing staff and patients, and the help it brings to cancer patients.
These Hope For Tomorrow units are partnered with NHS hospital trusts. Each unit costs £260,000 to build and run for three years, but the charity receives no NHS money, and relies on voluntary donations.
Recognising the tremendous benefits the service brings to the Marlborough area and local cancer patients, the Rotary Club has pledged to continue its support this Hope For Tomorrow unit as one of the Club’s chosen charities.
Paul Cowan told Marlborough News Online the Club wanted to say “Thank you to the magnanimous and kind-hearted people of Marlborough and District for contributing so generously to our Rotary collections, our car-boot sales and our other money-raising events, that make possible these donations to charities that can benefit our area.”
Hope for Tomorrow was founded in 2003 and now has these state-of-the-art units in Gloucestershire, Somerset, Hampshire - as well as in Wiltshire. They are now fund raising for their fifth and sixth units.
The charity’s aim is to have chemotherapy units in every county in the country.
Hope for Tomorrow will also provide a partnership hospital trust with a nurses’ support car. These cars allow chemotherapy nurses to make travel between the hospital’s oncology centre and the daily location of Hope for Tomorrow’s mobile chemotherapy unit more efficient and so maximise the team’s treatment time.
