Mail Force PPE: made in Britain!
Moving words from factory that’s joined Mail Force mission to help frontline staff
DOCTORS, nurses and care staff can now fight coronavirus with a fresh supply of British-made protective gear thanks to Mail Force.
The charity yesterday began the first deliveries of the new range of equipment – and none of it had been flown around the world.
The first of more than a million hospital aprons travelled only 30 miles from a former cotton mill to a hospital on the front line of the battle against Covid-19.
‘We are grateful for all we can get, and if it is made around the corner, so much
the better,’ said Peter Morgan, infection nursing chief at 450-bed Tameside General Hospital as the Mail Force van pulled up.
Inside were 30,000 aprons and 100 face visors for a health trust serving 250,000 people on Manchester’s eastern fringe.
Having handled more than 1,000 confirmed virus cases (142 of them fatal) it is now looking after 51 victims. For Mr Morgan and his colleagues, every piece of personal protective equipment (PPE) – including the hospital apron – is essential in bringing those numbers down to zero.
This vanload, however, was only a tiny fraction of Mail Force’s initial order of 1.5million aprons that will now be channelled into the main NHS distribution network over the next three weeks.
It matches an identical order from the NHS itself for UK-made aprons that will be produced at a factory in the Midlands.
Yesterday, the Mail went to see the first of the Mail Force aprons come off the production line at Griffin Mill in Blackburn. A
‘Important to know how much people care’
red-brick Edwardian textile mill, it was latterly a carpet factory for decades until cheap international competition did for the carpet-makers and it has since ended up churning out assorted forms of polythene.
Beneath giant rotating spools of blue, white and yellow plastic, a team of 30 staff are working round the clock in three shifts to keep pace with demand.
‘When the pandemic started, items like these were all being imported from the Far East, so it feels good to be making them for our own NHS,’ said Habib Patel, owner of More Polythene yesterday.
Pre-virus, his factory was making bespoke wrappings for clothing and food products for our major high street retailers. Business then took a sharp downward turn.
Now, though, staff put on the Government’s furlough scheme have been summoned back to make aprons, while another four workers have been employed to help maintain production levels.
A hospital apron is not a complicated bit of kit – it is essentially stamped out of a sheet of plastic – but it is vital in preventing any infection passing from patient to medical staff.
And because these things should be changed every time a healthcare worker moves from one patient to another, they are needed in vast quantities. There have been moments when some healthcare providers have come dangerously close to running out.
Last month, three nurses on a coronavirus ward at a north London hospital were photographed wearing binliners in the absence of aprons. All three subsequently tested positive for the virus. That grim story alone explains why this simple piece of equipment is such a key part of the anti-Covid armoury. It has certainly given some of the staff at Griffin Mill a renewed sense of purpose.
‘It’s nice to know that, in some way, we are helping to propel the work of the NHS,’ says Habib Patel, whose brother Zaki is a GP.
One of the longest-serving members of staff, delivery driver Zia UlHaq, 59, is equally pleased to be doing something for the cause.
Three of his seven children are doctors and his eldest daughter is working on a coronavirus ward.
‘Here we are making these aprons – and she will be wearing one!’ says Zia, proudly.
From Griffin Mill, all pallets of new aprons are taken up the road to Mail Force’s local partner, the Issa Group, which provides medical supplies to hospital trusts all over North-West England.
There our first delivery was wrapped up and loaded, along with boxes of face visors and thousands of bottles of (homeproduced) hand sanitiser that Issa kindly added to our donation.
At Tameside General Hospital, our first port of call, the staff were delighted to see fresh supplies for the PPE store. This is a well-run hospital with no immediate shortages but it makes everyone sleep a little sounder to know that the cupboard has been restocked and that so many members of the public are contributing to a fighting fund like Mail Force.
‘It’s really important for the staff to know how much people care – and it’s great when local people have been making it,’ said chief operating officer, Trish Cavanagh, herself a former nurse.
Still in his scrubs, palliative care consultant Dr Neil Pender, appeared. He said: ‘Anything that makes people feel safer is a great thing and this thing is going to be with us for quite some time.’
The hospital trust works closely with the local and regional authorities. Our next stop was Dukinfield Town Hall, where Mark Whitehead, head of Tameside’s adult care operations, and his team came out to unload a further batch of aprons, visors and hand sanitiser.
This was destined for more than 70 care providers, including charities, care homes and hospices.
Greater Manchester’s Mayor, Andy Burnham, voiced his delight at this vital local contribution to fighting a national crisis.
‘We are very grateful for this generous donation,’ he said. ‘Thanks to donations like this and with everyone pulling together, we are able to keep supplies stable.’
It is a small point in the scheme of things. But all over the country people will be glad to know that somewhere among the vast mountains of PPE being consumed across the UK, there is now a substantial chunk that can say: ‘Made in Lancashire.’
‘Workers can feel confident’