The annual Bike Fest in aid of Blood Bike West will take place at The Galway Plaza this Monday, June 4. The event has raised over €10,000 for the charity over the past few years. Blood Bike West was Ireland’s first Blood Bike Service and is an all-volunteer emergency logistic service using motorcycles for the collection and delivery of urgent items to and from hospitals, clinics, laboratories, hospices, and other patient centres in the West of Ireland.
The event will consist of a Monster Bike Exhibition, a charity run and lots of family events. The world-renowned charity stunt rider, Mattie Griffin, will perform on the day.
Bike registration starts at 9:30am and the run will commence at 10:30am and return to the Plaza at 12:30pm. All proceeds (registration fees for the Bike Run and the Bucket Collections ) will go to Blood Bike West which is now a well-recognised charity.
It was started by a group of Galway motorcyclists who were inspired by a combination of the history of the SERV service in the UK which has been in operation for 35 years and also a popular Channel 5 TV Series at the time – Emergency Bikers. The material advantages of a portable, efficient method of servicing deliveries to and from medical sites was immediately obvious and was the perfect fit for motorcycles.
The decision to start the service was made to offer an out-of-hours, weekend and holiday delivery service for emergencies between any hospital, clinic and laboratories.
Training is a key part of the Blood Bikes set-up and an ultimate assessment by An Garda Síochána forms an important part of the process. The basic service offering from Blood Bike West to care and service providers is to cover out-of-hours from 7pm to 7am and at weekends and bank holidays. Amongst the items carried are bloods and tissues samples, scans, emergency equipment, reagents and medication.
