A Somerset based biker group is providing vital services to the NHS with their ‘Bloodbikes’ scheme, operating across Dorset too.
The Yeovil Freewheelers have an operative on call almost all the time, ready to dispatch a rider to deliver life saving equipment and blood to patients in desperate need.
Kris Knapton, a long-serving rider and dispatcher for the charity, said: “It’s about freeing up resources for the NHS. It’s allowing them to get patients home where we can deliver their medication nice and quick, getting them out of that hospital environment.”
They deliver anything from blood and platelets for urgent transfusions, to medical equipment and documents needed for imminent procedures- they even used to transport organs, before the NHS stopped that service.
The charity is fully self sufficient, and not backed or funded at all by the NHS or the government. Supplemented only by public donation, Kris said: “It’s through attending key events like this weekend’s beer festival in Dorchester that we get money coming into the charity, which just means we can keep doing what we’re doing.
“Every bit of money that comes in goes back into the bikes, so nobody within the charity is paid at all- it’s that love of being out on the bike, and some people have done it because they’ve had dealings with the NHS themselves and seen the stresses it’s under as a service.”
Kris explained how they receive very little detail in the calls for help they receive, so it’s the intrinsic knowledge that they’re helping people that’s most rewarding for the volunteers: “We don’t often hear stories back as to who its helped, so when that happens if the nurses reach out directly, or we come across someone we’ve helped at an event, it’s amazing really.
“It’s been quite nice when someone’s gone “it was one of your chaps that delivered bloods to my partner when he was in sepsis”, or, “you’re the one who got the milk to us when we had a premature birth”, so it’s things like that that really hit home.”
With every urgent delivery, Bloodbikes continue their incredible work to ease the strain on the NHS.
If you’d like to join the YFW Bloodbikes charity, or donate, you can do so at https://www.yfwbloodbikes.org/ .
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