Published 11 April 2022
Actor Linda Bassett has supported our ongoing fundraising appeal to send out-of-hospital birth bags and other vital equipment to war-torn areas of Ukraine.
“Imagine giving birth to your new baby in a damp, dark basement. Or worse, while your home is being destroyed. Or travelling for miles, sometimes on foot, to cross a border into safety, to have your baby in another country, without your family about you because they have stayed behind in danger. Baby Lifeline is sending these best-equipped bags to support maternity care in this vulnerable and terrifying time. Please continue to help us. Thank you.”
Linda Bassett and fellow Call the Midwife co-star Leonie Elliott joined Baby Lifeline for the launch of our Community Midwife Bags in 2019. Thirty-nine of these bags have been adapted and sent to Ukraine in the past few weeks and are being used to deliver babies in war-torn areas including Kyiv, Sumy, Chernigov, Bucha, Vorzel, Kharkiv and Irpin.
Linda Bassett has starred in acclaimed films and TV series including East is East, Calendar Girls and Lark Rise to Candleford. Since 2015 she has played Nurse Phyllis Crane in BBC One’s award-winning period drama series, Call the Midwife, which follows a group of midwives, nurses and nuns working in London’s East End during the 1950s and 60s.
We are still fundraising to that we can send more bags and vital equipment to vulnerable mums and babies in Ukraine.