Teesside's Bloodrun EVS being hit hard by fuel costs
The blood bike charity says they deliver blood, medication and supplies to hospitals, including children’s units
A life-saving voluntary courier service in Teesside says soaring fuel prices are making their work harder.
Bloodrun Emergency Voluntary Service (EVS), which is a blood bike charity, says they deliver blood, medication and supplies to hospitals, including children’s units.
So far this year they've answered more than 1,100 covering over 65,100 miles.
Martin Dixon, chair of Bloodrun EVS, said: "Fuel being our biggest spend, we look at around about 1,500 pound a month on a busy month. We do get support from the likes of BP. We're a registered charity, so we do get some discounts, which are really helpful.
"We've seen around about 25 to 30% increase just in our fuel costs. I think it also has a knock-on effect to the people who do donate to our charity or the businesses who do help us. They're having to spend more money on fuel daily, so they've got less money to give, so I think the knock-on effect to us is double. We're spending more on fuel and potentially getting less money in to cover the cost as well.
"We've been quite lucky in the past few years that we have had a really good set of years in fundraising campaigns at various raffles and businesses have been very generous. So we do have a little bit of a cushion in our bank account, but that won't last forever. So if this does continue, fingers crossed we don't have to, but we might have to drop work.
"We might have to prioritise some jobs over some other ones and we just want to help patients, that's what we're here for, to prevent suffering and provide early diagnosis and hopefully we can say yes to every job that we get. Our motto is normally say yes and then we work out how we do it later on. So yeah, hopefully it doesn't continue too long.
"Sometimes there's misconceptions that we just do blood. Actual transfusion blood is around about 20% of what we carry. The rest is urgent samples, we do a lot of cancer biopsies, other stuff that we carry is medical equipment, baby milk. You know, we've carried respirators for neonatal and if it'll fit on a bike or it'll fit in the boot of a car, we'll take it really."
Find out more on their website.