Disaster Relief Charity help Barts Health Distribute PPE Visors
Volunteers from the disaster relief charity, Team Rubicon UK (TRUK), have helped Barts Health NHS Trust by assembling and transferring 2,000 vital PPE visors to support colleagues at Whipps Cross Hospital.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, the charity set up a ‘National Voluntary Coordination Cell’ (NVCC) to create a database of national unmet needs and offers of resources. A team of Regional Liaison Officers and volunteers were then deployed to the current unmet needs, and once established, worked up operational plans to help.
The partnership with the NHS arose after Professor James Calder, one of the clinical leads at the NHS Nightingale London, got in touch with TRUK to ask if there was something the disaster charity could help with; they happily obliged.
The visors were donated to the NHS by Foster + Partners, an architectural design and engineering firm based in London who specialise in 3D printing technology. The visors where then transported to a section of the Nightingale Hospital that TRUK were working at. They were then assembled by the volunteers ready for distribution to Whipps Cross and other hospitals around London.
The project has been operating for roughly two weeks, with the TRUK team being focused on helping protect the doctors and nurses on the frontline via the assembly of PPE visors.
Alex Knights, an ex-Rifles veteran and TRUK volunteer said: “It’s great to be serving again in a time of need and working with other veterans to support the NHS”.