GP raises nearly £40k toward PPE for Midlands hospitals

Dr Farhaan Shabir has spent the last six weeks fundraising £38,000 for the NHS, and has connected with a number of small businesses to provide PPE to hundreds of frontline staff at hospitals and hospices across the region.

He now wants to turn his attention to providing packs of life-saving medical equipment to GPs and nurses working in local practices – and is asking the public to keep up their generous donations.

“So far it’s been very good and the public support has been awesome,” he said.

“I’ve managed to raise a lot of funds for equipment at hospitals, and we’ve even been able to donate to hospices.

“In the coming weeks it’ll be GPs, nurses, practice nurses in the GP setting that we need to provide for, because they will be at high risk from the second wave.

“So far we’ve got the overalls, we’ve got the masks we’ve got the visors, what we are thinking is that because general practice is probably going to see face to face patients in the next few weeks, is to try and create 500 packs which we distribute to GPs and nurses in the community because they will be at high risk from the second wave. When patients start coming back in there’s still a risk to healthcare workers.

“I’ve always thought that the paramedics also needed some help so we are going to try and get in touch with West Midlands Ambulance Service to see what the situation is like with the PPE there. I want to try and help the paramedics and the GP surgeries, and the continued support will keep this going for potentially the next six months.”

So far Dr Shabir’s main focus has been on providing reusable masks to frontline workers, with over 500 distributed across the region so far.

Globally there is a massive shortage of FFP3 masks, which filter out 99 per cent of all particles.

However the masks being provided by Dr Shabir and his team actually filter out 99.97 per cent of particles, making them more effective than the FFP3 masks, while they are also reusable if the filters are changed.

The GP says he was motivated to help his frontline colleagues when the scale of the shortage became apparent.

And he has even dug into his own pocket to try and make sure frontline workers don’t go without.

“I felt a massive need to safeguard my colleagues in the hospitals,” he said.

“There was a finite supply of disposable masks, so we decided that we needed to start giving the staff who are probably going to be working in this environment for at least six months a reusable mask.

“One of the things that actually did spur me on was I felt I had to do something. When I’d seen the number of healthcare worker deaths in China and Italy I felt that this has to be taken seriously and it needs to happen quickly.

“So for me I think from the GoFundme there was probably about £10,000 there but I’d already spent £30,000 because of the way that the money was coming through from the online account. I spent over £35,000 and I think I probably only received £22,000 from the account, so for me it was never about the money. I would spend for my colleagues from my own pocket if I needed to. I just feel that life is more important than money.

“I’ve been to Heartlands hospital and Good Hope hospital – these are hospitals that I already know quite well – and then I also received a call from City Hospital to say that there was a need for this and they were actually trying to fundraise themselves.

“I received a nice message back to say that it’s empowered the workforce to feel safer at work and they actually want to come to work, and that was great.

“I want to keep doing this for as long as I can.”