Patients tuck into goodies as the gifts keep on rolling in
Patients in all wards at the Royal Alexandra Hospital are now benefiting from an online appeal which saw generous Buddies donate thousands of essential items to those who can’t see their loved ones.
Following weeks of success, the online RAH Covid Patients’ Appeal has now delivered essential items and goodies to all wards at the Paisley hospital.
Almost 9,000 people have donated to the Amazon Wish List appeal - which allows generous people to buy items from the site to be send straight to the hospital.
Originally launched to support coronavirus patients, the appeal has been so successful - generating more than £125,000 of items - that organisers John McGlynn and Paul Shaw extended it to all hospital patients.
All people who are admitted to the RAH are currently not able to have any visitors due to the Covid-19 crisis.
Now, with hundreds of parcels still arriving every week, senior charge nurse Stephen Hepburn says they are now being distributed all over the hospital.
He said: “Everything is going great. “We are still taking in weekly deliveries just now and they are being distributed across all the wards in the hospital.
“All the patients who are receiving items are so grateful and it is nice for them to know that while they can’t see their families, there are people who are out there thinking of them.”
Businessman John and Paul, who is a paramedic at the RAH, set up the appeal just one week ago to support those in hospital who are unable to have visits from loved ones.
The pair - who are former Paisley Grammar school pals – did not expect such a phenomenal response.
They have now drafted in kindhearted volunteers at John’s MacDowall Street business Storage Vault to sort through hundreds of parcels every day.
Stephen said this was welcomed due to the sheer number of parcels which are being delivered every day.
He added: “When the deliveries started coming in we thought a storage cupboard would be enough, but that was filled in a few days.
“We also have a conference room which is full of donations.
“It has just been amazing to see so many people looking out for one another.”