Neonatal Smoking Anger

13 June 2011, 05:15 | Updated: 13 June 2011, 10:32

More than 500 people have joined a Facebook group calling on smokers to stop lighting up outside a hospital neonatal unit.

It's three months since the group was set up in protest at what's going on at the unit at Milton Keynes Hospital, but parents are angry smokers are still lighting up directly below the windows.

Mum Faye Rockley from Bletchley, who had to spend time at the unit when her daughter Isla was born in 2010, set up the group.

"Even though there are signs there which are two foot high, specifically saying that the babies are above there, people are just standing there and blatantly ignoring them," she said.

"These babies, some of them, they're being cared for in an Intensive Care environment," she continued.  "It's a life or death situation for them and they don't need passive smoking to add to their problems."

See the Facebook group

"I'm not anti-smoking.  My issue is with the fact that people are smoking where it clearly states that the poorly babies are above them and they're clearly flouting the rules."

The campaign she's leading have struggled to get very far with taking action against those smokers continuing to ignore the signs, because the hospital say Milton Keynes Council put in place the No Smoking Zone across all of the hospital grounds, and not the hospital.

A group's now been set up to look at the issue of smoking on the hospital grounds, and Faye's been invited to be a part of those discussions.