It started last Friday with Pudsey day and all this week CHFT colleagues have been out and about promoting healthy lifestyles and healthcare opportunitiies. Here's a round-up of their activity.
** Children in Need. There were lots of things happening on the Children's Ward, which raised £181, as well as two special characters, Batman and Robin, aka our driver Barry Ackroyd and Executive Director of Workforce Suzanne Dunkley, dashing round our hospitals raising funds - and they brought in almost £450 has been raised to-date.
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** It's HIV Testing Week and our Sexual Health Team had an information stand in CRH entrance to promote awareness of the importance of early diagnosis.
Our consultant Lindsay Short said: " What is still a concern is the increase in late diagnoses and locally our late diagnosis rate is more than 40% - so this week is a vital one.
" Late diagnosis leads to a ten-fold increase of death within one year. It is also cost effective reducing the costs of in-patient admissions."
Increasing testing reduces the rates of undiagnosed. 1 in 8 people living with HIV in the UK don’t know they have HIV and those undiagnosed spend an average of 3-5 years unaware that they have the virus.
Dr Short added: "Let’s work together to reduce the number of people living with undiagnosed infection. Testing early excludes HIV as a possible cause of a patient’s ill health."
Further information or advice please contact the HIV service on 01484 347077
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** Yesterday we held a drop-in session on our Maxilifacial Unit at HRI to promote Mouth Cancer Awareness week this week.
Anyone who visited our team had a check-up which could potentially save their life.
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** HRI Ward 19 (see photos) were the lucky winners of a chocolate hazelnut cake following Antibiotic Awareness Week last week. They really got involved and numerous colleagues made pledges on how they would help to #KeepAntibioticsWorking.
All colleagues can still become antibiotic guardians by visiting www.antibioticguardian.com and making a pledge.
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