Eye care boost for hospital

The charity - currently celebrating its golden jubilee year - agreed to hospital requests totalling more than 43,000 at last Thursday's meeting.

Consultant ophthalmic surgeon David Lloyd-Jones told the league's general committee the laser device would be of "enormous value" is detecting and monitoring glaucoma, particularly in elderly patients who find it difficult to perform some of the standard tests used in the management of glaucoma.

The meeting agreed a 1,200 request from the Bexhill Community Mental Health Team for a water fountain for the use of clients attending for outpatient, counselling and other mental health services at the new Bexhill Health Centre and staff.

The Bexhill League will contribute a third of the 13,807 cost of providing 17 King's Fund beds and mattresses for St Raphael Ward at the St Anne's mental health centre. The specialised hospital beds had been requested for the ward after a health and safety assessment suggested that divan beds should be replaced. Some beds have already been replaced under NHS funding.

A high percentage of St Raphael patients are from Bexhill.

The league is also giving 990, half the cost of providing Braun perfusor compact pumps, used for emergency infusion of intravenous drugs to heart attack patients at the Conquest Hospital.

It is paying nearly 11,000 for two Baxter intravenous pumps for administering treatment ranging from blood transfusions to chemotherapy at the McCartney Unit at the Conquest.

Both Conquest and Bexhill day surgery unit patients will benefit from a new 4,428 dental drill. The Bexhill league is paying half the cost of providing a back-up drill which will reduce the risk of operations being cancelled through lack of availability.

The meeting was told that at present children and adults with learning difficulties are the main users of the hospital dental service but with the arrival of another dental surgeon more tooth implants and involved surgery will be undertaken.

The Bexhill and Conquest leagues will be sharing the 8,000 cost of providing a breathing support system for premature babies with breathing difficulties.

But the meeting wanted more detail about a request for help with buying an 11,445 Thymatron machine for the Conquest. The Conquest league has agreed to pay half.

And members have asked that radiologist Dr John Giles should come to their next meeting to give them more detail about his request for a 22,000 medical web server which would allow CT scans to be viewed from home by on-call radiologists and orthopaedic consultants.

The equipment would bring the local NHS Trust in line with other trusts.

The renal dialysis unit run from Bexhill Hospital by Brighton Health Care NHS Trust says it is again being "overtaken" by its own success.

It has a list of patients waiting for dialysis locally rather tan having to travel to Brighton.

It would like to add three more machines at Bexhill at a cost of 28,500.

But this would also involve complex building work and the league is asking manager Lisa Burgoyne to supply more information.