Steve Turns To eBay To Give Cancer Patients ‘Half An Hour’ Of Their ‘Life Back Each Time’


02/27/2018

Steve’s gifts are saving money for hospitals along with precious time of cancer patients.


Dailycsr.com – 27 February 2018 – eBay’s digital marketing platform allowed a cancer patient to help his hospital by donating seven “chemotherapy machines” at “£175” each. The sixty two year old, Steve Brewer battling with cancer takes his treatment at Peterborough City Hospital, wherein he learnt from a nurse that the hospital was unable to afford any more “triple pump machines” administering cancer medicines at the cost of “£4,300” per piece.
 
Brewer then took to online browsing and found the machines on eBay platform at “a fraction of the cost” mentioned by the nurses. In his words:
“I was doing my first chemo and the nurse explained they didn't have enough pumps.
“I said 'I'll see if I can find one to donate'. I was looking around and one popped up on eBay for £175.
“The triple pumps can get the drugs into you much quicker. It cuts 30 to 40 minutes off each treatment.
“It literally gives you half an hour of your life back each time.”
 
Steve is from “Peterborough, Cambridgeshire” and in the year of 2014, he was “diagnosed with bowel cancer” and since then he has undertaken “25 rounds of chemotherapy” and claims that the treatment is “keeping the disease at bay”. After Steve’s above mentioned discovery on eBay, he raised around “£900” in fund for donating an additional six “pumps to the hospital”.
 
However, initially due to its second-hand nature, the Peterborough City Hospital staff expressed their reluctance. Nevertheless, Steve along with Angelo Cuenca, a “chemotherapy nurse”, played an instrumental role in persuading “pump makers Baxter” for re-commissioning “the machines free of charge”. This allowed the machines to stretch their life span by “another five years”. Steve added further:
“There was a bit of red tape. It took a while but we persevered”.
“They needed these machines and they knew what a difference this would make.
“There must be loads of these secondhand machines. They must go somewhere.
“It could save hospitals hundreds of thousands of pounds.”
 
While, the Peterborough City Hospital’s Chemotherapy Day Unit’s Manager, Linda Nkhata, said:
“We are incredibly grateful to Mr Brewer for his generous donation.
“The pumps cost £3,400 each to buy new, which would be a massive outlay for the trust, however, to have seven of them donated has made such a difference to the patients receiving treatment in our hospital, and also to our staff.”
 
 
References:
www.cambridge-news.co.uk