Business Buddy + Jammies In June For Kidz First

As they have done for the last couple of years, the caring and sharing team at Business Buddy are collecting pyjamas for the Kidz First Children’s hospital, and people can take their clean, but now too small, PJs to the office of Astill Hawke, at 35 Allens Road in East Tamaki.

For those who aren’t too sure what Kidz First is all about, the Business Buddy team want to make this press release a chance to find out. Kidz First Children’s Hospital opened in December 2000 and offers both regional and national health services.  Situated at the Middlemore Hospital site, it has an 82-bed inpatient facility and its own emergency department.

 Kidz First specialises in burns, plastics and orthopaedic treatment and also has a neonatal unit which caters for premature and critically ill new-borns. The majority of patients come from the diverse community of Counties Manukau. Within this region there are about 123,000 children under the age of 15 and 54 per cent of these children live in impoverished conditions. Diseases such as respiratory illnesses and rheumatic fever are a significant problem.

Every week 240 children are admitted to hospital (excluding new-borns) and 63 children are admitted electively for surgery. Every year 11,000 children are admitted to Kidz First and some 22,000 are treated in Kidz First Emergency Care, which is exclusively dedicated to babies and children.

The hospital has a strong whanau focus, with beds for caregivers to stay with their child, well-equipped playrooms and family lounges. An onsite school provides education for long-stay patients. These excellent facilities are coupled with a dedicated team of staff that help to ensure children and their families receive optimum care. Kidz First also has a large community based team that treats sick children in their homes. This team incorporates health promotion work, such as immunisation programmes and preschool vision and hearing screening. It has also adapted to meet the community’s needs by taking the services to the people, through initiatives such as mobile testing for hearing and dental health.

Business Buddy, in association with Astill Hawke also support Bubbles for Bookkeeping Babes which raises money to support raffles for Kidz First Children’s Hospital. Kirsten Hawke of Astill Hawke says, "We asked our local children's hospital what they need and the emergency care department is desperately short of quality toys, so we're on a mission to help them out.”

For more information on PJs for Kidz, please go to http://www.middlemorefoundation.org.nz/jammies-in-june

and for information on Business Buddy please go to http://www.businessbuddy.co.nz .