Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) from Keele’s research and teaching laboratories has been made available to the frontline NHS workers who are responding to the coronavirus pandemic.

As the NHS responds to the most significant public health crisis in decades, all parts of the healthcare sector have reported a shortage in PPE used by healthcare professionals to protect themselves when treating infected patients.

But now a collection drive by staff from Keele’s Schools of Medicine and Life Sciences has seen stocks of PPE from Keele’s laboratories made available, not only to the Royal Stoke Hospital but also General Practitioners across North Staffordshire.

Following an initial suggestion to donate PPE from the School of Medicine by Dr Giles Roberts, a clinical teaching fellow at the Royal Stoke University Hospital, the idea was further supported by Professor Paul Horrocks and Dr Helen Price, along with colleagues in Schools across the Faculties of Natural Sciences and Medicine and Health Sciences. 

Keele University has now amassed a collection of PPE which will be made available to healthcare staff and those working on the frontline of the pandemic, and this effort is continuing.

The first donations were made this week, with a range of PPE including gloves, aprons, visors and masks being given to 17 General Practices from Blythe Bridge to Kidsgrove - many of which provide clinical placement activities for Keele Medical School students.

Professor Horrocks said: “Clearly the first call for this PPE is our colleagues in the frontline of the NHS response to Covid-19. However, we hope that as provision of this PPE increases to the NHS that the stocks held at Keele University may then be donated to those working in the charitable sector who are providing care as well as schools providing emergency childcare cover. It has been really affirming to have had colleagues across the University respond so rapidly and generously to this call.”

Picture credit: Professor Paul Horrocks