The League of Friends of Noble’s Hospital is spending far more than it’s receiving.

The organisation provides patient comfort such as courtesy packs of toiletries, gifts for patients who spend Christmas in hospital, Easter eggs for all in patients, soft toys for children having blood tests, toys and craft activities for the Children’s Ward as well as medical equipment.

Its annual general meeting reported its activities in 2016 and appointed its officers for the forthcoming year.

In all, the spending in 2016 amounted to £90,000, which is almost three times the total revenue generated from donations, legacies and investment income.

The shortfall was funded from reserves but that this level of shortfall is not sustainable in the long term.

This year the meeting was addressed by two guest speakers from the hospital staff.

Mr Mike Quinn, the director of hospital services, summarised his first 12 months in his post, and highlighted several initiatives that he and his team are working on to improve the ability of the hospital to provide a broad range of services and reduce the number of instances where patients have to travel off island for their treatment or follow up appointments.

Mr Quinn praised the work of the hospital staff and thanked the league for its support over the year to making a positive difference for patients at the hospital.

The meeting then heard from Stephen Doyle, pathology manager at the hospital, about the results the microbiology department had achieved using FILM Array equipment supplied by the League in 2016.

This equipment has been used successfully on many occasions to speed up the identification of infections and allow the patients to get effective treatment much quicker.

The previous processes took around seven days to isolate, grow and identify the cause of the infection but the FILM Array can do this within an hour.

Consequently patients are treated much more effectively.

Mr Doyle gave several examples of specific instances where patients have benefitted from the FILM Array but also noted that 37 patients suspected of having meningitis have had this diagnosis ruled out, avoiding the need for patients to go through challenging treatment.

In closing Mr Doyle explained that the microbiology unit hada tradition for giving equipment a nickname, and that the FILM Array had been named LOFTY, which stands for League of Friends Thank You!

The charity is asking for support from the public.

To help contact the treasurer, Jane Gelling, at [email protected] or on 862191.