Highland Hospice

Highland Hospice is the only Hospice serving adults with incurable life-limiting disease in the Highlands of Scotland and is acknowledged as the centre of specialist palliative care expertise in the region. The Hospice currently provides a 10 bed In-Patient Unit in Inverness and a Day Hospice on the same site.

Other onsite healthcare and related services for patients include physiotherapy, occupational therapy, emotional and psycho-spiritual therapies and complementary therapies. Medical staff also provide a service within Raigmore Hospital and community hospitals as well as visiting patients at home. The Hospice also provides bereavement counselling for relatives, a 24 hour telephone helpline and education and training for other healthcare professionals to enhance their ability to provide palliative care in their own communities. While the majority of the referred patients have cancer, the Hospice is increasingly called upon to care for people with other incurable life-limiting disease including lung, kidney or heart disease and neurological conditions such as motor neurone disease.

The area covered by the Hospice stretches from Dalwhinnie in the south, east to Forres, west to Ardnamurchan, Lochalsh and Skye and north to John O'Groats and Cape Wrath. This area is 10,000 square miles. Highland Hospice relies on the generosity of the Highland community to raise more than £42,000 that is required every week to keep the services going and to ensure that an exceptional quality of care continues to be provided.

For more information on the work of the Highland Hospice please visit www.highlandhospice.org.

Riders for Health

Riders for Health is an international non-governmental organisation born out of the world of motorcycle racing. Its mission is to ensure that health workers in Africa have uninterrupted access to reliable transport. Without such transport, all health care projects fail. Using an innovative social enterprise model, Riders has developed a practical, dynamic approach which is helping to achieve real and sustainable development. They have put in place reliable preventive maintenance systems for two- and four-wheeled vehicles used in health care delivery allowing health workers to reach rural villages time and time again.

Riders currently operates three national programmes, in the Gambia, Zimbabwe and Nigeria, where we work with ministries of health, UN agencies and local humanitarian organisations. All programmes are managed by wholly-African, wholly-professional teams, and not by volunteers or expatriates. This means that Riders is able to build a lasting base of local knowledge and a culture of maintenance in the communities with which it works.

If you would like to know more about Riders for Health visit their website at www.riders.org.