Mark Keating here from Whitewater

As you may or may not know that on the 12th of August this year, I will be starting my first solo charity cycle from Dublin to Belgrade, and back, a total of 6,000km . This is to help the lives of very sick children here in Ireland and in the Former Yugoslavia.

In 1993, I volunteered to spend 18 months with the Red Cross, helping to improve the lives of people and children shattered by the war in the former Yugoslavia. Today, twenty years on, I would like to use this anniversary as a catalyst to help improve the lives of children here in our Children’s hospitals as well as once more helping children in the Former Yugoslavia.

The two Irish children’s hospitals, Temple Street and Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children tell me that they need vital specialist equipment to help our most sick children in their Intensive Care Units.

At Temple Street hospital the funds will buy a NoxBoxi Nitric Oxide Delivery System which is used for very sick children who are not responding to conventional ventilation. The current systems they have are very basic and labour intensive as they require constant adjustment due to any changes in ventilator settings. The NoxBoxi is a new “Intelligent” system which monitors the Ventilator flow to the patient and automatically makes adjustments to the Nitric Oxide Delivery rate accordingly. In critical situations the use of Nitric Oxide Therapy can be the difference between life and death.

The chosen equipment for Our Lady’s Hospital is a bedside Brain Monitor which gives 24 hour real time information on brain function in both hemispheres of the brain and will be used to help assess the condition of very sick new born babies in the Intensive care unit, this equipment will reduce the chance of brain damage to very sick children.

The Mother & Baby Hospital in Belgrade performs specialist operations for children from all over the Former Yugoslavia. In the Burns unit they need a new skin graft machine as the present one is 20 years old. This new Skin Graft Mesher will improve the way a skin graft is performed to the burn area and reduce the chance of additional infection to children who have suffered severe burns.

We have set our sights on raising €26,000 for EACH of the two Irish Children’s Hospitals through much needed donations. We will be also raising €4,000.00 for the Mother & Baby Hospital in Belgrade.

Whitewater will be matching these funds raised towards our overall target of €60,000.

ALL THE FUNDS raised from this trip by you, will go directly to purchase this equipment for these Children’s hospitals.

And so to help me I am asking you to donate as much as you can to this cause, to enable us to help these children. Donations of €250 and upwards allow the fund to benefit from tax relief which increases the value of your donation hugely. And there is no limit on how much you can give! So please give generously.

Please make your payments out to Temple Street Hospital and return to me in the enclosed prepaid envelope or go to www.whitewaterfoundation.org/donate
Please don’t hesitate to call me on 087 264 0781 or email mark@whitewaterireland.ie to talk over this appeal with me.

Looking forward to hearing from you and thank you in advance for your support.
Sincerely,

Mark