Two weeks on from palliative care nurse Nikitta Jones's request for help for patients on her ward at the Cynon Valley Hospital, near Merthyr Tydfil, DPD is this week set to complete the delivery of over 60,000 items kindly donated by its staff, to hospitals all over the UK, as part of the second DPD NHS Thursday drop.
Staff nurse Nikitta originally wrote to DPD CEO Dwain McDonald on 5 April requesting a shopping bag of cosmetics, personal hygiene and food supplies for her ward, as families were no longer allowed to visit under the current Covid-19 restrictions, so patients weren't getting supplies and treats from home.
The idea to contact DPD came from Nikitta's partner Nikos, who is a delivery driver in the firm's Cardiff depot.
When Dwain discussed the idea internally, it began to snowball and within a week, over 30,000 items had been donated by DPD staff - either extra items that they had at home, or things they have been able to pick-up while doing their usual shopping.
The list of items was agreed with the NHS and deliveries coordinated with DPD's existing NHS contacts. Two types of packs were created and collated within each of DPD's regional depots. The welfare pack includes cosmetics and toiletries such as shampoo, shower gel, sanitary products, toothpaste, make-up, shaving foam and disposable razors. The food and treat packs contain instant noodles, energy drinks, biscuits, crisps, tea and coffee.
The first wave of deliveries to 160 NHS hospitals nationwide took place last Thursday and the DPD vans will be heading to hospitals around the country again today (Thursday 23 April) with a further 30,000 donated items.
Nikitta commented;
Nikos was telling me what DPD were doing to help the NHS with deliveries at this crucial time, and as a frontline worker I know how important that is. I thought it was worth a cheeky email, but I wasn't expecting the response I got. Thank you to everyone at DPD, it really will make a huge difference.
In recent weeks, DPD has been making thousands of additional deliveries for the NHS including hospitals, GP surgeries, out of hours centres, pharmacies, adult care homes and hospices, to deliver millions of masks, gloves, aprons and other supplies. In addition, DPD has joined forces with 3DCrowd, the community of 3D printer owners who are using their machines to help alleviate the acute shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE). DPD is collecting the component parts from all the different volunteers and delivering them, free-of-charge, to a central hub in Sheffield where the face masks are being assembled and then onwards to hospitals and other healthcare facilities around the country.
IOC fellow, Dwain McDonald, DPD's CEO commented,
I'm really pleased we were able to do this for Nikitta and for the NHS teams around the country. I think everyone is united on this - we want to do all we can to help the NHS and we want them to know how much we appreciate what they are doing for us. We weren't expecting this to become a nationwide initiative, but we have the infrastructure and a lot of great contacts at the NHS and when you combine that with a very generous bunch of people, incredible things can happen.
