‘Hospitals may have the PPE but it’s not filtering down’ claims charity who supply extra scrubs to frontline health workers

Scottish charity For The Love of Scrubs, who are sewing and distributing scrubs to NHS Scotland, say that some health workers are wearing bin bags as there isn’t enough protective clothing

Charity, For The Love of Scrubs, has set up a network of tailors across the country to sew new scrubs for frontline healthcare workers during the coronavirus pandemic and has already raised over £27,000 in its first week.

Organiser Clare Boyle explains: “We knew there was a charity that did this in England, and we decided that we would do it in Scotland and we could coordinate with local health boards to see what they needed.

The Scottish charity supplies scrubs to frontline health workers

“Within a day we had around 1,200 seamstresses who came forward to help out. The problem is getting the material for the orders we have. We need around £65,000 to complete the orders we have already.”

The material for the scrubs are purchased wholesale by the charity and sent to be sewn together by volunteers across the country.

Clare admitted that she was shocked by the amount of order’s they had received.

She said: “The scale of the organisation is massive and it makes me so angry. Some of the stories that we’re hearing would break your heart, GP’s wearing bin bags because they don’t have the right clothing.

“The line from the government is that there is enough personal protective equipment (PPE) but it’s not filtering down. We have heard from out of hours doctors who have said that they don’t stand a chance of getting any protective gear.”

The charity has people in each region who reaches out to hospitals to see if there are any requirements that they can help with, but also has an email address for health workers to contact them directly.

Clare explains: “The material we buy is in accordance with hospital requirements, so that they can be useful. It takes about 2.5m of material for one set of scrubs, and we’ve already ordered 8,000m of it.

“We are just trying to take the weight of the NHS and the hospitals, so anyone who wants to help, it would be great if they could get in touch with us, rather than the hospitals directly.”

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