ENTRANCES to Bradford Royal Infirmary (BRI) have been lit up in blue and pink in memory of babies who died very early in their lives.
Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is supporting national Baby Loss Awareness Week (9-15 October) with this simple gesture of remembrance which will form a wave of light across the country at 7pm on 15 October.
Charlotte Berry, who works for the Trust, asked if the Trust could join in the illuminations in memory of her baby, Liyla Hope, and all the other babies who have died.
Charlotte had Liyla at BRI’s Maternity Unit in 2014, but sadly she only survived for three days. Since then Charlotte has fundraised for the special care baby unit and supported SANDS, the stillbirth and neonatal death charity, which joins in the awareness week.
“Being a mum of a baby who is no longer with us, I’m very passionate about this and forever grateful for the amazing care Liyla received at BRI,” said Charlotte.
Remember
“I’d like to not only highlight the month of October for other bereaved parents, but for BRI itself for the amazing work it does every single day. Anything I can do to remember Liyla is always such a joy, so I’m very pleased the Trust is joining in this special event.”
In the year following Liyla’s death, Charlotte and James, Liyla’s dad, had another baby girl, Meyla Faite, who has just started school.
Now in its 17th year, Baby Loss Awareness Week is an alliance of more than 60 charities and organisations, aiming to raise awareness of the key issues around pregnancy and baby loss in the UK.
Throughout the week, bereaved parents, their families and friends unite to commemorate the lives of babies who died during pregnancy, at or soon after birth and in infancy.
ENDS
For further media information, please contact communications@bthft.nhs.uk or call 01274 382265
Note to Editors:
- Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust:
Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is responsible for providing hospital services for the people of Bradford and communities across Yorkshire. We serve a core population of around 500,000 and provide specialist services for 1.1 million people.
Our 5,500 staff work over several sites, including Bradford Royal Infirmary, which provides the majority of inpatient services, and St Luke’s Hospital, which predominantly provides outpatient and rehabilitation services. We also manage local community hospitals at Westwood Park, Westbourne Green, and Eccleshill.
In early 2017, a new £28 million wing opened at Bradford Royal Infirmary, part of a £75m investment to improve patient care across our hospitals over a five-year period. It provides world-class facilities for elderly care, children’s services, a state-of-the-art intensive care unit with increased single-room provision and a retail concourse.
The new wing is a continuation of our work to improve patient experience after our new £2 million neonatal unit officially opened in January 2015. Our maternity services were recently shortlisted for the Royal College of Midwives’ (RCM) Midwifery Service of the Year Award, recognising excellence and innovation in the provision of maternity care.
In 2017, we also completed a £2m refurbishment of our Emergency Department (ED) as part of an ambitious vision to create a more efficient acute medicine service for the people of Bradford. It has been designed to provide a slicker and more efficient service, with faster senior clinical involvement at an early stage in the patient pathway.
As a teaching hospital, we are at the forefront of education and development in healthcare, and have an excellent reputation for research performance. We are one of the leading centres in conducting applied research in the country, particularly in quality and safety, elderly care and rehabilitation.
The Trust is home to the Bradford Institute for Health Research (BIHR) where researchers have led the development, validation and implementation of the award-winning Bradford Electronic Frailty Index (eFI) which helps calculate an elderly person’s risk of disability, impairment, falls and complications of chronic diseases, as well as their diminishing independence and capability. This is now being used by 98 per cent of all GPs across the country.
Our award-winning Ophthalmology department is home to numerous worldwide clinical trials taking the lead in eye care research and we are one of only three sites in the United Kingdom to be enlisted in the Perioperative Enhanced Recovery Hip Fracture Care of Patients with Dementia (PERFECTED) study, which will investigate how the NHS can introduce better standards of care to improve outcomes for people with dementia.
For more information please visit www.bradfordhospitals.nhs.uk
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The Trust has its own Bradford Hospitals Charity: https://bradfordhospitalscharity.org/