HOW YOU MADE BRITAIN PROUD
42m items of vital PPE for hospitals, care homes and charities ++ £11.7m given by generous readers and benefactors ++ Now Prime Minister and NHS chiefs lead praise for ‘historic’ Mail Force campaign
BORIS Johnson last night saluted the ‘incredible generosity’ of Mail readers at the end of one of the most successful newspaper appeals in modern times.
After the Mail Force charity donated its 40 millionth piece of personal protective equipment to the war on Covid-19 – with more to come – the PM said the campaign was a ‘remarkable example of what we can achieve when we pull together to fight a common f oe’. Health Secretary Jeane Freeman said: ‘We are very grateful for this generous donation.’
Created by this newspaper as an emergency response to a national PPE shortage, Mail Force is about to complete its winter stockpile of protective equipment for charities on the Covid19 frontline. It will spend its last reserves on state-of-the-art machinery for the North East of England, leaving a permanent legacy stretching from Shetland to London’s East End.
It comes as the last donations to Mail Force took the total past £11.7 million, exceeding all expectations.
Since the early days of the pandemic, our overarching priority has been to protect healthcare workers, not just
in the NHS but also in the care home and charity sectors.
There have been no office overheads or staffing costs to swallow up precious funds.
Every penny donated by tens of thousands of readers, royalty and some of Britain’s most eminent philanthropists has gone straight into the fight against coronavirus.
This week, we will have acquired enough supplies of PPE to see two more of Britain’s best-known charities through the worst of the winter. It means the pieces of PPE procured by Mail Force will reach 42,304,000 – and a broad range of equipment it has been, too.
As well as tens of millions of masks and aprons, the total includes an airliner full of 50,000 fluid-resistant all-in-one coveralls and a convoy of lorries bringing 100,000 gowns across Europe. While much has been acquired overseas, we have also helped establish new production lines in the UK.
Latterly, we have provided the most advanced testing machinery for some of Britain’s leading medical institutions.
The final beneficiary will be the Newcastle upon Tyne NHS Foundation Trust. This is the trust which treated Britain’s first Covid19 patient, and it remains a key hub for the control of infectious disease across the North. Mr Johnson said last night: ‘The Mail Force campaign is a remarkable achievement. I’d like to pay tribute to Mail readers for their incredible generosity and public spiritedness. Your contribution made a real difference to doctors, nurses and care workers on the frontline.’
Miss Freeman said: ‘ In these unprecedented times, it is important we all pull together in the fight against Covid-19. We are very grateful for this generous donation of equipment to help those saving lives during this pandemic.’
Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross said: ‘It is initiatives like these which make us all proud of the collective generosity of people across the country.
‘The rapid deployment of the Mail Force campaign at the beginning of the pandemic was extraordinary and the response from the readers was outstanding. These shipments of PPE were vital for frontline staff in the NHS, care homes and charities.’
While Mail Force vans have been delivering to hospitals, care homes and charities, the vast majority of our PPE has gone straight to the main NHS distribution hub in Daventry, Northamptonshire. From there, it has been delivered wherever it was needed most.
Our campaign has included all the devolved nations, all health services and all forms of healthcare. Donors can rest assured that they have secured quality PPE and machinery for every corner of the kingdom – often in the face of global shortages.
As part of this week’s final allocation of Mail Force funds, a new £422,000 order for 2.16 million masks and 1.4 million aprons will be shared by Marie Curie, which provides care for the terminally ill, and the learning disability charity, Mencap. These will be delivered in regular deliveries to the regional hubs of the two charities until the end of January.
Edel Harris, chief executive of Mencap, said: ‘This winter is going to be tough for everyone but particularly for the people who we support. The closure of day services, loss of routine and difficulties staying in touch with family means that people have been struggling to cope.
‘Our support workers have been going above and beyond to create a sense of normality and community.
‘In some cases, they are the only contact some people have. A heartfelt thank you to Mail Force and Daily Mail readers.’ The grant to Newcastle upon Tyne includes a new £50,000 Kingfisher purification system, for extracting viral RNA, along with two £10,000 airtight cabinets for working with infectious samples and a £30,000 storage system for archiving serum containing antibodies.
‘We are the only high consequence i nfectious disease unit for the North of England and Scotland so this equipment really is incredibly useful,’ the trust’s chairman, geneticist Professor Sir John Burn, said yesterday. ‘We are all extremely grateful to Mail Force for the donation.’
Our charity has also spent more than £1 million in ‘gold standard’ PCR (polymerase chain reaction) testing systems for hospitals across the UK, including two of Britain’s best-known institutions for children, Great Ormond Street in London and Alder Hey in Liverpool. These machines will be used to detect a range of viruses, not just Covid-19, long after the pandemic is over.
For Mail Force is not just about making a difference here and now. Its legacy will endure for years to come.
‘A heartfelt thank you to Daily Mail readers’