Mental health trust supports aid deliveries to Ukraine
Hospitals, care homes, orphanages in Ukraine are benefiting from donations of furniture and equipment no longer used at Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Mental Health Trust (NSFT) and helping the trust save money on specialist disposal.
Two lorry loads of items were collected at the end of January, with another load due collected this month.
NSFT sustainability officer Gill Lee, who contacted Yorkshire Aid after hearing about them on an NHS forum, said: “For the past 10 years NSFT has been working with many charities sending items that we can no longer use to hospitals abroad, including ones in Romania, Ukraine and Africa.”
Items shipped out over that time have included wheelchairs, mattresses, PPE, uniforms, pump-action beds, medicine trolleys, bathing chairs, children’s toys, chairs and tables and cardboard sick bowls/urine bottles.
Gill said: “Items condemned by infection control are sanded down and repainted and used in care homes and orphanages. It’s heartening to see that items we discard will be sustainably reused and help make staff and patients in the homes have a better quality of life.”
She said electronic and biomedical engineering (EBME) equipment such as wheelchairs, walking aids, PMA equipment, meds trolleys, mattresses, beds, spare medical stocks such as PPE, vacutainers (but no medicines), curtains and non-washable chairs some of which need specialist disposal.
“All of these would have been disposed of at a cost to NSFT, so this saves money and also has a positive effect on sustainability through reuse. We have saved about £3000 from these two lorry loads alone.”
A video has now been made by Yorkshire Aid to document the journey and what happens to the equipment when it arrives abroad. Silent Night: A Convoy to Ukraine was made by one of the Yorkshire Aid volunteers of a convoy into Kyiv.
NSFT chief finance officer Jason Hollidge said making the donations was a win-win opportunity for the trust. “Not only are we helping communities overseas which are struggling to get the hospital equipment they need, we are saving it from being destroyed and the costs that entails, together with the environmental benefits of reusing equipment,” he said.
Peter Mortin, from Yorkshire Aid, thanked the organisations who had helped by donating equipment and supplies for aid convoys, including the latest one which will leave the UK on 26 March.
He said: “It is amazing how many hospitals, care homes, orphanages and ordinary people in need we have managed to help. This time we will be in Ukraine for 12 days delivering all the aid like normal and then myself and 18 volunteers will be running a DIY SOS style refurbishment on one of the old folk’s care homes we have been helping.
“The place is not really fit for purpose, we will be installing showers, toilets, stair lifts and new beds with proper mattresses. Alongside this we will be trying to redecorate the whole place.”
People can follow their progress on the Yorkshire Aid Convoy Facebook pages and watch the video on You Tube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOyUMQol79c