Professor Tony Belli’s giant leap for charity

National Institute for Health Research Surgical Reconstruction and Microbiology Research Centre (NIHR SRMRC) director Professor Tony Belli is throwing himself out of a plane in the name of charity.

Professor Belli will be undertaking a parachute jump, strapped to an instructor, to raise money towards a £250,000 fundraising effort to buy a mobile CT scanner for the Critical Care Unit at Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham (QEHB), where the SRMRC is based.

As well as his role at the SRMRC, a specialised trauma research facility, the professor is a consultant neurosurgeon at QEHB and professor of trauma neurosurgery at the University of Birmingham.

He will be joined in the jump, on Saturday, September 16, at Hinton Airfield in Brackley, Oxfordshire,  by his 16-year-old daughter Amie and her friend Will Conway.

The skydive is the final one of four staged each year by QEHB Charity which are open to staff and members of the public to take part and raise funds for a department of their choice within the hospital.

Prof Belli said: “Many patients with an acute brain injury require treatment in the Intensive Care Unit and unfortunately need to be scanned quite often to deal with any swelling or bleeding in the brain.

“Taking a patient to a CT scanner is a complex procedure that involves disconnecting and reconnecting life-saving equipment and transporting somebody who is critically ill up and down a lift.

“We want to fund-raise for a portable CT scanner that can be used at the bedside without the patient having to move.

“I am terrified of heights, so am hoping that people will give generously!”

Donations to the fund can be made online by visiting Tony’s Just Giving page at http://www.justgiving.com/Tony-Belli.