HSDC staff have been busy doing their part in cutting and sewing scrubs for key workers during the Easter holidays, with some excellent results. Alton staff Fiona Salmon and Angela Beasley are two examples.
Fiona and her neighbours have so far “made 150 bags and over 300 caps; 80 caps went to Basingstoke & Winchester hospitals and the rest will be going to Frimley and Royal Berkshire. The scrub bags will be split between Chawton and Basingstoke.
“My neighbour saw a plea on the Facebook group Hampshire Scrubbers; it appears that communities all over Hampshire have got involved. Great feeling to have played a tiny part in such a mammoth task. I had one of the very easy jobs of simply cutting out rectangles for the drawstring scrub bags. All the PPE gets put into these and then the whole thing can be thrown in the washing machine!”
Science Technician Angela received a request from a friend to help make scrubs for the doctors at her husband’s GP practice, who are being asked to work at the COVID19 Hub and had no scrubs. Angela explains more: “With friends Mandy and Sally, we started sewing with downloaded patterns, received doorstep donations of fabric from the lovely ladies of the Beggarwood Bookworms and obtained lots of help and inspiration from the Facebook Group ‘For the Love of Scrubs’. We put an appeal on Facebook and soon, some of the Basingstoke-based members of the brilliant ‘Hampshire Scrubbers’ plus a few others who we found through friends, were helping us too.
“So far, we have made one set of scrubs for all of the team and scrubs washing bags for them to be put in after a shift and then transferred straight to the washing machine still in the bag.
“This is happening all over the UK – small groups coming together to help our heroes in the NHS in whatever small way we can.”