The London District Catholic School Board (LDCSB) has donated five skids worth of personal protective items and a steel rack full of gloves to the London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) amid the novel coronavirus pandemic.
Spokesperson Mark Adkinson says the items were delivered Tuesday and come from its 53 schools as well as the board office.
“Since all schools are closed, custodians pulled items that could be spared for now in order to redirect the supply to the hospital,” Adkinson told Global News.
“We had a shipment of 1,500 bottles of hand sanitizer that were back-ordered that are now available that we have arranged to have delivered directly to the hospital.”
On Wednesday, the London location of PCCA, the Professional Compounding Centers of America, donated pharmaceutical-grade hand sanitizers and personal protective equipment (PPE) to go towards the Middlesex-Elgin VON’s eshift team in London and St. Thomas. The eshift team provides care to palliative and pediatric patients in their homes and the donation will “help protect more than 50” health-care technicians.
The donation was part of the company’s Compounding Handoff campaign, launched by its USA division. The campaign encourages compounding pharmacists to supply hand sanitizer on a wider scale to emergency responders.
Amanda Cassel, GM of PCCA Canada, says she learned that the eshift was in need of PPE and hand sanitizer.
“We typically support pharmacists but part of our support for those pharmacists involves hosting a training session here in our building. We had some leftover materials from our last class including some PPE. At first, I was a little nervous because I didn’t have a whole lot to give but when I reached out to them they were very excited,” Cassel said.
“There are some gowns and gloves and also six litres of hand sanitizer … which I personally made.”
Meanwhile, lead organizer of a grassroots initiative spearheaded by the London Middlesex Primary Care Alliance (LMPCA), Janet Dang, tweeted an update to a call to action made three weeks ago.
At that time, the organization issued a call to local groups and health-care providers whose offices are closed to donate PPE supplies.
On Wednesday, Dang announced that within the past three weeks they were able to supply 250 primary care providers with more than 8,000 masks, 1,000 disposable gowns, 130 cloth gowns, among other things.
–With files from Global News Radio 980 CFPL’s Matthew Trevithick.