Salvation Army joins fight to deliver PPE to frontline NHS staff
published on 5 May 2020
The Salvation Army is helping deliver thousands of items of protective personal equipment (PPE) to frontline NHS staff to help protect them against coronavirus.
Staff from the church and charity's trading company (SATCoL) have teamed up with emergency services to support the ShieldNHS initiative and help get 50,000 face shields to doctors, nurses and other health workers across the UK.
Already, volunteer Salvation Army drivers have collected face shields assembled by London Fire Brigade crews and delivered to 20 locations including London, Cardiff, Reading, Bristol, Oxford, Peterborough, Cambridge, Manchester, Liverpool, Wakefield, Birmingham, Leeds and Bradford.
The Salvation Army is working with ShieldNHS, a non-profit organisation made up of medics, engineers and designers from across London, Imperial College, Royal College of Art, Cambridge Judge Business School and Oxford, working on a voluntary basis to address the national shortage of face shields. Drivers from the charity’s trading company are delivering the ‘Badger Shield’ – a simple, scalable and immediate PPE face shield.
Two of the Salvation Army drivers who have been making deliveries are Dale Foster and Robert Scorobohaci. Dale collected face shields from Lambeth Fire Station and delivered them to hospitals in the Midlands and north of England, while Robert dropped off supplies in London, Oxford, Bristol, Berkshire and Cardiff.
Tony Hosking, director of The Salvation Army Trading Company’s clothing collection division, said: “Delivering face shields to the NHS is just one of the ways The Salvation Army has mobilised to respond to the coronavirus. We are reaching deep into communities in countless ways, whether helping homeless people self-isolate or delivering food parcels to out-of-work families.
“ShieldNHS is an incredible initiative and The Salvation Army is honoured to support it. Over the past week we have been providing logistics support through vans and drivers to distribute the assembled PPE to hospitals around the country.
“Our volunteer drivers have worked tirelessly and I would like to say a massive thank you to them for stepping forward to help deliver vital equipment to the NHS heroes bravely fighting this pandemic.”
