NHS DELIVERIES
THE vast majority of Mail Force donations went straight to the NHS’s central PPE hub in the Midlands. From this vast warehouse, the NHS decided where items were most needed and sent them to all corners of the country. But, as we detail in these examples, a fleet of Mail Force vans took some of the strain too, helping deliver to hospitals, care homes and charities.
Within hours of the first 20-ton airlift touching down at Heathrow in April, Mail Force vans wasted no time in delivering consignments to the NHS front line. Milton Keynes University Hospital was the first drop-off, where nurses Vicky Burns, centre, and Katherine Palmacci, left, and Agnes Whiting tried on the kit and voiced the sentiments of all their colleagues by saying: i ‘CanC we j just say a bi big thank h k you.’ ’ ■ Lorry loads of protective gowns arrived at Dover after a 2,000-,mile journeyjy across the Continent from Turkey,y, and the first deliveries were made that day to the Lister Hospital in Stevenage, Hertfordshire. Chief nurse Rachael Corser, below, accepted nine large boxes of gowns, plus boxes of masks and aprons, and said: ‘The public’s support has been very humbling. It is so important for the staff to know we have enough PPE to keep them and the patients safe.’
■ Paramedic Samantha Westwell welcomed a Mail Force delivery of life-saving equipment in Alfreton, Derbyshire, in May. Boxes containing hundreds of aprons, as well as visors and sanitisers, were driven from Lancashire where they had been produced for Mail Force in a former Blackburn cotton mill to East Midlands Ambulance Service's central stock centre.