Renowned actor, screenwriter and activist Emma Thompson has kindly donated PPE to Inverclyde Royal Hospital through the Mail Force charity campaign. She has also sent a video message to NHSGGC staff you can watch below.
Thompson, who has always split her time between London and the West of Scotland, is currently staying with her family in Dunoon. She saw that Inverclyde was one of the worst hit areas in Scotland by COVID-19 and reached out to support.
Thanks to her donation, the charity Mail Force, has donated 5,000 aprons to Inverclyde Royal Hospital. Aprons are one of the vital pieces of personal protective equipment needed to protect staff and patients from COVID-19. The aprons will go towards building Inverclyde Royal Hospital’s reserve stock. NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde currently has good supplies across its hospitals.
Emma Thompson said: “Newspapers can often make you feel quite helpless but the Daily Mail’s Mail Force charity is practical and useful and genuinely required. When they asked if I’d like my donation to go towards a particular place, I immediately thought of Inverclyde. They have been amazing to cope and pull together against the odds in all of this.
“The NHS expresses the best of us: a sense of social morality, mutual responsibility and care towards one another that as we see in this crisis, is the most important part of all our institutions, there is nothing else. The only thing that stands between us and calamity in this crisis is the NHS. We’ve seen how valuable it is. So it’s important to not just clap but to also make sure we value it in a real and functional way – with more resources, funding and staff.”
Inverclyde Royal Hospital was the first hospital in NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde to have a positive case of COVID-19 in mid-March and has sadly seen the highest death rate in Scotland.
Dr Abby Gunn, lead clinician at Inverclyde Royal Hospital, has been instrumental in the response locally. She said: “We’re a small but dedicated team in Inverclyde. The community is amazing here and patients and staff alike have banded together in these tough circumstances. We’re grateful to Emma for her kind donation and warm wishes.”
Jane Grant, Chief Executive of NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde said: “Our sincere thanks to Emma and Mail Force for their generosity and thoughts of Inverclyde. We are so proud of our team at Inverclyde Royal Hospital and indeed all of our staff who have gone above and beyond to care for our patients in these tough times. These aprons will go towards building our reserve stocks of PPE.”