Caring army of 730,000 on standby to ease burden
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THE army of volunteers who have stepped forward to help the NHS during the coronavirus crisis will lift the spirits of health workers and boost the morale of the wider public, says Britain’s former victims commissioner.
Baroness Newlove of Warrington, the Conservative peer and communities campaigner, said the response from more than 730,000 people who have volunteered to help take food to the homes of the vulnerable and deliver vital equipment was “showing people that they’re not on their own”.
More than 500,000 signed up in just 24 hours last week after Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, urged people to donate their time to help the 1.5million who have to self-isolate for 12 weeks.
Anyone over the age of 18, fit, healthy and non-symptomatic can help to deliver shopping to the vulnerable, transport patients to and from hospital, drive medicines and equipment to NHS facilities and check up on isolated individuals by telephone.
Baroness Newlove, whose husband Garry was killed by a gang of thugs in Warrington in 2007, says volunteering will lift the spirits of those taking part in the scheme, like herself, and send a strong signal to NHS workers that the country is behind them.
She told The Sunday Telegraph: “It’s a scary time, but if people can pull together we’ll get through it. This is about showing people that they’re not on their own. And not only does it lift the morale of people in the NHS to know that there’s thousands of people out there working to take the pressure off them, it’s a boost for everybody else’s morale as well.
“We’re all getting cabin fever, stuck at home with the kids driving people crazy running around all the time, and this scheme will help because it allows everybody to do their bit.”
Baroness Newlove, who served as victims commissioner for more than six years from 2012, said yesterday that along with thousands of other volunteers she was waiting to hear what role might be assigned to her. She said: “I love driving so I imagine I’ll be delivering food or pharmaceuticals to the vulnerable, anything useful like that.
“But if you can’t drive, there’s still lots of things people can do – such as talking to others over the phone to make sure they don’t suffer from complete isolation.
“I know several ral of my colleagues in the Lords have also signed up. Fundamentally it’s about helping health workers, so if we e can take some of the pressure off them, m, it’s all to the good.”
Another volunteer, nteer, Lauren Turner, 21, a student at the University of Sheffield, had time on her hands after teaching for the final year of her journalism degree became ecame online-only.
She said: “I signed igned up because I wanted to make a difference to people that really need d help, with me being healthy at the minute and nd being bored at home. ome. I have my own car r and I want to help as much as I possibly can n during this awful time.” me.”
Laurence Penn, 23, a graduate engineer based in Leeds, eeds, added: “In the same ame way as Lord Kitchitchener called upon everybody to help elp in the war effort, we’re being called upon on to do our part. If previous generations were called on to make e such a large sacrifice, ce, I’m happy to be called ed on to do a bit of shopping.” ing.”
Once checks have been carried out, volunteers unteers will be provided with h the log-in to the GoodSAM Responder esponder app on which they will be able to find and select local assignments. gnments.
Dr Nikki Kanani, ani, GP and NHS director of primary ry care, said: “This is one of those once-in-a-lifetime moments where e a single action from one person n can be the difference between life ife and death for another.”
A renowned organ transplant specialist has become the first working NHS surgeon to die from coronavirus in Britain. Adil El Tayar, who died last Wednesday at West Middlesex University Hospital in west London, is thought to have contracted the virus while working at a hospital in the Midlands. He had been self-isolating after developing symptoms and was admitted to hospital on March 20. Here the 64-year-old father of four’s cousin, Zeinab Badawi, a BBC News journalist, pays tribute to him.
There was added poignancy to my applause on Thursday night. Minutes earlier, I had just learnt that a cousin of mine had died from coronavirus. He was a doctor – a transplant surgeon – but he had volunteered for the accident, emergency and general department at his hospital in the Midlands. He had
Every day in this column, The Telegraph will seek out and report snippets of comfort as the world fights coronavirus
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wanted to be deployed where he would be most useful. That was typical of Adil; always willing to help, always with a willing smile. I’d last seen him a month earlier at a concert in London. It was a charity event and I had driven my elderly mother and aunt, along with their Zimmer frames, to the venue. At the end of the evening, just as I was wondering how I’d get these two immobile women back into my car, Adil turned up unprompted. He was in high spirits, looked in fine fettle and told me not to worry as he’d take charge. I gratefully accepted and watched him guide my mother and aunt out of the crowded hall.
After he deposited them into my car, he wished us a safe journey back, closed the door of the vehicle with a flourish and waved goodnight. A smile, of course, planted on his round face – topped with a hairline that receded dramatically every year, with coronavirus has found “good outcomes for both mother and infant”, though more research is needed. The Lancet report found that mothers and babies are off to a better start than those during the SARS outbreak, with only one in seven infants returning a positive result after birth in a small study.
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much to his alarm. Three weeks later, Adil was on a ventilator, fighting for his life against coronavirus. He died. His lungs had failed him. All his other organs had been functioning normally. He had just turned 64.
A dedicated doctor and devoted family man with four children – two of them, like him, doctors in the NHS. It was with a heavy heart that I rang his wife to give her my condolences. She could barely string two words together between her sobs.
One Friday night, two weeks ago, he’d felt a little unwell. Adil was a stoic and an optimist, and was never one to imagine the worst, so he thought he’d soon recover. But after a week in bed, he did take a turn for the worse and became very breathless. His medical team told the family that his lungs had come under attack from coronavirus and he could not breathe unaided. The ventilator was switched off.
It had taken just 12 days for Adil to go from being a seemingly fit and capable doctor working in a busy hospital to lying in a hospital morgue.
This virus is unforgiving, indiscriminate and it can be brutal. Of course, it is only fatal in a very small number of cases. But make no mistake about its capacity to unleash tragedy in the most unexpected way.
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A group of young Russians, many of whom are medicine students, are volunteering to deliver food and prescriptions to the elderly.