The Oliver Fisher Neonatal Unit

The unit has a total of 26 cots including 8 intensive care cots. It cares for babies born prematurely or who are sick and need the intensive care that only a highly specialised facility, skilled staff and sophisticated equipment can provide to ensure their survival

Each year, about 450 babies are admitted to the Unit, 100 or more requiring ventilation. Over the period that the Unit has been open, we have increased the number of babies we have looked after and also increased the percentage, who have survived and survived well in order to lead a good quality of life. Not only do we serve the population of the Medway towns the biggest population within South East Thames, but we also take babies from the surrounding districts of Dartford, Gravesend, Maidstone, Tunbridge Wells and often go further a field as Ashford, Dover and Hastings in order to help very small babies survive. At times babies from out side Kent are also transferred to us when there are no available cots in the hospitals where parents live.

The government and primary care trusts provide the unit and pays for the staff but the money available to equip and staff a large intensive care unit is never sufficient. Because of the concern and understanding of parents whose babies have been treated in this Unit and the medical staff who have treated them, the Oliver Fisher Special Care Baby Trust (OFSCBT) was formed to raise additional funds to purchase the very expensive and high tech equipment necessary to enable the Unit to continue to enhance its high standard of medical care for the babies.