Call The Midwife's Linda Bassett has visits Jersey's Maternity Unit as patron of the charity Baby Lifeline.

Linda Bassett, who plays Phyllis Crane in the long-running BBC One period drama, visited the maternity ward at Jersey's General Hospital to meet the team of real-life modern-day midwives.

Linda is patron of maternity safety charity Baby Lifeline and ambassador for is Ukraine Appeal.

Jersey Overseas aid has been supporting the appeal, donating £100,000 towards essential kit to help deliver babies in the war-torn country.

"I'm very proud to be a Patron of Baby Lifeline, and an ambassador for the development of its specialist birth bags and its Ukraine Appeal."

Birth bags developed by Baby Lifeline are used by community midwives.  They contain everything needed to help women deliver babies safely at home.

They took three years to develop with the help of midwives, doctors and paramedics to decide what should go in them, and what the optimum size would be.

Community midwives in Ukraine have been helping women give birth in bomb shelters and refugee camps using the bags, to save the lives of the mothers and their babies.

So far over £500,000 worth of specialised equipment relating to maternity and trauma has been sent to Ukraine, which includes:

• 163 out-of-hospital birth bags,
• 29 fetal dopplers,
• 22 intensive care beds,
• 50 Ameda Pump sets,
• and 300 SpO2 monitors.

Baby Lifeline also works closely with Jersey's baby loss awareness charity Philip's Footprints.

The Jersey-based charity sponsored 281 health professionals to go on a training course provided by Baby Lifeline so more can be done to prevent baby loss.

Whilst visiting the maternity ward, Linda gave out waterproof fetal dopplers which can be used to monitor a babies heart beat, as well as being useful for water births.