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Local charity are real LifeSavers
Published: Wednesday, 29 April 2020
Local LifeSavers volunteers and one of the donated vehicles
NHS Lanarkshire is working with local charity LifeSavers Scotland to help patients get to community assessment centres if they don’t have their own transport.
The non-profit charity, based in East Kilbride, usually provide support to NHS Lanarkshire during the out-of-hours period. This normally includes transporting goods including medical records and blood samples between NHS sites. But in these unprecedented times they have stepped-up and are also transporting patients.
The charity’s volunteers are now running three patient transport vehicles 24 hours-a-day, seven days-a week to bring suspected COVID-19 patients to their local community assessment centre if they are unable to make their own way.
The vehicles, kindly donated by the Arnold Clark branch in Peel Park, East Kilbride, are fitted with a bulkhead partition to meet COVID-19 standards and to ensure driver and patient safety. Drivers pick up patients from their homes and take them to the assessment centre and, if needed, take them home. There is a strict cleaning regime between journeys which the drivers carry out before picking up the next patient.
Graham Johnston, Head of Planning and Development, said: “I would like to send a very big thank you to all the volunteers at LifeSavers for once again giving up their time to selflessly help our patients, in what is such a worrying time for people. I would also like to thank Arnold Clark for their kind donation of the vehicles, this is very much appreciated.”
Jim Harley, Chairman of LifeSavers, added: “LifeSavers volunteers are happy to help our NHS as we have done for the last 7 years. We have hopefully been reactive and expanded enough to help make a difference at this very difficult time for everyone. We have upscaled our operations during hard times before, but this is unprecedented.
We would like to thank all of our team who provide this service 7 days a week, all completely unpaid.”
