North West Blood Bikers
Paul and Kevin from North West Blood Bikers came to talk to the club at our March Speaker Meeting. The North West branch of the charity was set up in 2011 and now carries not only blood but other vital emergency items, which includes anything from scans to breast milk. There is only one area in the UK which does not have a Blood Bikers group and their purpose is to transport items free of charge all over the country as an out of hours service.
North West Blood Bikers currently have 14 riders and 5 specialised motor bikes and there are also 5 controllers, plus one response car and one transit van. The riders who all have full time day jobs elect to work any three nights out of seven for the charity. The Blood Bikers are not a blue light service, but they are fully trained by ROSPA and both bike and rider are fully kitted out to a high visibility standard.
Average running costs are in the region of £40,000 all of which comes from public donations and all the riders are volunteers who want to give something back to their community. In the 2 years that the North West Bikers have been running they have saved the local Tameside Hospital over £20,000 in taxi costs. They started dealing only with Tameside but have now taken on other hospitals including Pennine Acute. They also transport items for St Ann’s Hospice.
the Duty controller has responsibility for each rider which is done by a very sophisticated Satellite Navigation system and no bike is allowed to travel in temperatures below 2 degrees centigrade. All the bikes have been named after people who have been major sponsors of the team or people with whom the riders have formed a close association through their volunteer work.
Ashton Soroptimists are proud to support the Blood Bikers.