The Save The Baby Unit – the biggest miscarriage centre in the world – has re-opened at St Mary’s Hospital. The unit which helps thousands of couples experience the joy of parenthood was officially re-opened by Professor the Lord Darzi and TV personality Natasha Kaplinsky following an extensive refurbishment and years of fundraising. The new facility will continue to build on the clinic’s 15 years of work to help couples affected by infertility, recurrent miscarriages and later pregnancy complications to have healthy babies. The Save the Baby Unit charity raised £1m to entirely rebuild the clinic, bringing all clinical teams under one roof into a modern, light and welcoming environment.
The new space can accommodate three times more staff and new facilities - like a dedicated ultrasound room and new consultation and examination rooms. Professor Lesley Regan, Deputy Head of Division Surgery, Oncology, Reproductive Biology and Anaesthetics (SORA) at St Mary’s Hospital said: “Thousands of couples are going through hell. First they have problems becoming pregnant, then they suffer numerous miscarriages and then later pregnancy complications. Our mission is to make sure every couple takes home a healthy baby”.
The Save the Baby Unit has also been selected as the home for a unique tissue bank for pregnancy complications and will hold the largest ever collection of tissue samples from mothers, fathers, babies, placentas and miscarriage tissues as a resource for researchers at hospitals across London and further afield.
Rebuilding the Clinic
Last year Professor Lesley Regan and her team raised £1million to rebuild the Save the Baby Unit in the Department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology at St Mary’s Hospital and, in early September this year, Professor The Lord Darzi of Denham officially opened the new facilities.
Needless to say, rebuilding the unit was a huge task but so many wonderful people helped and supported Lesley along the way and an enormous amount of work went into making it happen. The department has been transformed from a rabbit warren of rooms, with little natural daylight and inefficient use of space, to a modern, light and welcoming environment which is a far cry from the institutional, rundown appearance of the department before work began. The new space caters for the needs of patients and staff alike, providing them with a professional working environment that has been tailored to meet their personal requirements.
So many people were involved along the way and everyone was very generous with their help, advice and time. However, Lesley would like to say a special thank you to the Architect Josh McCosh from Van Heyningen and Haward; Interior Designer Raffaella Formichella and Project Manager Adrian Spurrier from Ridge & Partners, without whom it would not have been possible to complete the project so successfully.
For Professor Lesley Regan and her team it has been very exciting to watch it come together, and since the end of May staff and patients have started moving into the newly refurbished unit. At last everyone from the miscarriage team and the fertility team to the Nurse Practitioners and laboratory staff are working together under one roof in the new unit.
It has provided Professor Lesley Regan and her team with a fantastic new environment to continue doing further vital and groundbreaking research in the hope of delivering many babies to those who have lost hope.
"For these patients every month counts as their fertility declines with time. That is why our new clinical and research facilities are so important and why we need to continue raising much-needed funds to enable us to help more and more couples, who have been affected by infertility, recurrent miscarriages or pregnancy complications , to have a healthy baby. Thank you for your support.
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Prof
Lesley Regan is head of the Department of Obstetrics
and Gynaecology at St Mary's Hospital, Director of
the St Mary's RMC and Visiting Professor to the
Harvard Centre of Excellence for Women's Health.
