PREMATURE babies at The Tweed Hospital have been given a helping hand by Banora Point fire-fighters.

The team at Banora Point Fire Station donated more than $2000 yesterday to the hospital’s neonatal ward.

Retained firefighter Andrew Stalker said the nursery, which looks after premature babies, was an easy choice for the donation.

“It’s close to the hearts of a few of us at the station because some of their kids have used the ward,” Mr Stalker said.

Tweed Hospital assistant director of nursing Wendy Howell said staff were thrilled with the donation.

“We’re very, very lucky,” Mrs Howell said.

“We don’t get many donations for the nursery.

“I don’t think many people know we have a special-care nursery; it’s where the babies go that have just been born and aren’t quite ready to go out to mum.”

Mrs Howell was touched the firefighters chose the ward.

“The firies who got the money together have had a baby or knew someone who had a baby in the nursery, so that’s really lovely.”

The money will be used to buy a Phillips baby monitor for the ward.

“It’s a cardiac monitor that monitors babies’ heart rates and oxygen saturation,” Mrs Howell said. “We’ve got a couple already, but because the number of births at Tweed have been growing we could use another.

“We recently extended our nursery so eventually we can take more babies, but we need to get more equipment. It’ll be fantastic.”

Mr Stalker said the $2016 donation was left over from money raised for the 2010 NSW Firefighter Championships at Tweed Heads.

“We approached different businesses at the time to sponsor the championships and by the time we had all our bills paid and everything finalised that was left over.

“We gave it to the women’s care ward for neonatal kids so they could use it to get an updated machine.”