MKSAC Newsletter June 1996

The DDRC is, as I am sure you all know, situated at Fort Bovisand in Plymouth and while we were down there we were lucky enough to get a tour of the place.

The DDRC was originally set up as a treatment centre for commercial and sport diving and as a diving medicine research unit. It is centred around three chambers with a depth capability of 200m. Recently the Centre has also expanded the hyperbaric oxygen treatment to non-diving patients to help reduce the overall costs and to improve their relationship with the NHS

The catchment area for the Centre is the coastline from Cardigan in West Wales right around to Bournemouth in Dorset including The Isles of Scilly. This makes it one of the, if not the, busiest recompression chamber in the Country

The Centre is desperately short of cash as all of their research etc., has to be funded from Sponsorship and gifts. In 1995 they received £25,000 as opposed to the RNLI making £54m . This puts the whole thing into some perspective - the RNLI are of course great guys and we are all VERY GRATEFUL to know they are out there but wouldn't it be good to knew that the DDRC were getting a little help too ? The Centre is of course funded by the NHS but this only covers the cost of patient treatment and does not replace equipment or carry out the much needed research.

If you would like to help the DDRC they do have a club which you can join. This cost £20 p.a. (£15 if covenanted) in 1996 and all the funds go straight to the Centre.  Membership entitles you to:-

The tour of the Centre was fascinating, I would recommend it if you are in the area and perhaps next time we are down there we may even get in a dry dive too!