help with transport to hospital for chemo

[Booboostwo]

Are there any volunteer services helping people get to hospital for chemotherapy?

My friend has metastatic breast cancer and cannot drive due to a lesion in her brain. She is beginning to have trouble getting to hospital for weekly chemo on public services but needs to get from Essex to London three times a month. Her appointments are weekdays and her husband is at work (she has been having chemo for two years now so unfortunately he cannot take that much time off work). They also have three DCs so are using up favours from friends for childcare. Her parents are elderly and infirm. I would take her gladly but I live in another country.

There is an NHS car ambulance service but they do not service her area.

A taxi would be prohibitively costly and they are already paying for private chemo for drugs unavailable on the NHS.

Any ideas? I have tried googling but nothing pops up.

Have you tried Macmillan? I think she's going to struggle via NHS if she's having private treatment but you could ask Macmillan or any of the other cancer charities?

My village has a volunteer-run service to get local people to hospital appointments. I think the person using the service pays the costs of the petrol/running the car/parking so there will still be costs involved that would soon mount up.

It's called a 'community car scheme'. I imagine it depends which hospital she needs to get to and how far East in Essex she lives and where in London she needs to get to as to whether a service like this might be available.

Has she asked her hospital? They must have lots of patients who face the same problem so I imagine they'd have some ideas.

If she fulfills the criteria of needing transport for a medical reason, either her GP or the hospital should be able to arrange patient transport. They cover all areas.

I don't want to give out too many details but she needs to get from a village near Maldon to central London.

The hospital do not offer a patient transport service, GP has said they cannot help, NHS car ambulance volunteers do not cover her area.

Will try Macmillan thanks.

Thank you everyone. Macmillan had a link to the British Red Cross who run a volunteer service. She has applied and hopefully they can help.