Give the kiss of Life this Christmas

LIVES volunteers will help more than 20,000 people each year and will use approximately more than 850 bottles of oxygen over the course of a single year.

Oxygen is used for critically or seriously ill patients with a variety of conditions including cardiac arrest shock and major trauma who will have low levels of oxygen in their blood. Low oxygen levels can damage all major organs; especially the brain and heart. Oxygen treatment is used to increase the amount of oxygen in lungs and bloodstream to a level that prevents such harm.

Each oxygen cylinder costs £10, for which LIVES has to raise funds from public donations.

On Local Charities Day, any £5 donation made through localgiving.org has the chance to be doubled, meaning donations on that day could help buy many more oxygen cylinders for LIVES responders.

Local charities day is a new government initiative that intends to celebrate the work of local charities across the UK and generate support.

As part of this initiative, Local Giving will match a total of 1000 £5 donations made through their website on the December 16.

Nikki Silver, LIVES CEO said: “Oxygen is a vital part of the kit carried by each and every responder. It is used in many life-saving situations and to provide relief to a number of seriously ill patients.

“We hope therefore that people will get behind our kiss of life appeal on Friday 16 December to help raise vital funds to ensure we can continue to provide oxygen therapy to any of our patients that will need it”

To make a donation that could be doubled, visit https://localgiving.org/charity/lives/