Summer 2023 update

Welcome back. It has been a very busy summer, so much so that newsletters have had to take a back seat. Throughout the summer the machine team have been busy sewing the brightly coloured scrubs for St. Nicholas Children’s Hospital. Thank you all for your continued hard work and support.

One of the most time consuming, but ultimately rewarding project saw ten articulated lorries of unwanted medical goods sent to Ukraine, following 2 years of patient negotiation by Rosie who sourced these from a London trust on the understanding that we would have to pay for shipping. Each lorry would cost £3,600 so Rosie started to look at ways to cover this. After much research and negotiation she arranged, via Jeremy Fish from Ardent Hire and Andriy Baganich from Rotary in Poland, to get these shipped to Ukraine for free, saving around £36,000. The approximate value of these items was £2.5m comprising 15,680 Scrubs, 149,144 isolation gowns, 44,530 washable patient gowns, 3,500 hazard level masks with filters for body exhumation, a pallet of nitrile gloves and a pallet of sterile surgical gowns.

The shipping was not without a variety of mishaps and misadventures. The shipping documents incorrectly stated Ardent Hire as the donor, rather than the Scrubbery, which caused confusion and delay at the border as Ardent are not a charity. The original warehouse had not repacked the pallets as had originally been requested so it was difficult to know what exactly was in each consignment. Finally there was conflict with the Ukrainian organisers who changed their minds on the disposition of the shipments and wanted to reassign them elsewhere. In the end the lorries all made it and the goods have started to be delivered, but we don’t have a lot of visibility into exactly where. Special thanks are due to Lisa at World Cargo Logistics Ltd for assisting with customs documentation.

Some of the items being distributed

While there are possibilities of additional similar shipments, we can’t proceed without more reliable partners at the Ukraine end. Rosie had been going to meet with the MP from Lviv, Nataliya Pipa, who is being mentored by our MP, Fleur Anderson, but just before this meeting was to take place all Ukrainian MPs were no longer permitted to leave the country. This contact still could be a possibility for a source of secure warehousing in Lviv.

Rosie helped organise and attended a charity gala dinner and auction in Windsor Guildhall that raised £25,000 towards sending more ambulances to Ukraine. This was in collaboration with the EmbraceMe foundation.

After the London Marathon we collected up thousands of foil blankets that would otherwise have gone into landfill, cleaned them through a mild bleach solution, folded and repacked them to be included in individual first aid kits for soldiers. In early June a consignment of camouflage nets, tents and microfibre towels was sent to the front line. A last minute consignment of aid was sent early September via Aleksey and Djamilia who repurpose vehicles for use in Ukraine, 5 camouflage nets along with boxes of bandages and dressings, syringes, laryngeal examination kits, specimen collection kits, adult and children breathing apparatus, catheters and adult incontinence pads. Aleksey drives his vehicles to the Polish border where Ukrainian drivers collect them and take them onwards.

Djamilia had earlier arranged an ambulance to call by in late June which we filled with items for the children’s hospital. We also discovered that our portable car battery starter was powerful enough to start an ambulance! Sergey drove the ambulance from Cardiff to Putney but the battery was obviously damaged because it held no charge despite the long drive and we needed to help him on his way. Sergey was formally a captain of a container ship in Odessa and is now trying to help in any way he can.

The Scrubbery Machine Team are roughly half of the way through making the sets of scrubs requested by the St Nicholas Children’s Hospital. In collaboration with Gerry Strahan from Medical Lifelines Ukraine and St. Margaret’s Church, who organise regular convoys of ambulances, we filled an ambulance full of much needed items to St Nicholas Children’s Hospital and to the First Medical Union hospital group last week. This included the first shipment of the operating room and rainbow scrubs (177 sets) which will reach the medical director on 12th September. We also sent some English reading scheme books, lovely items for the occupational therapy team, stickers, paper, pencils, craft kits, bubble machines, puzzles, puppets, lego and toys to name a few things.English has been designated the second language in Ukraine and the reading scheme books will be used in the school room in the hospital for children in long term care. For the Unbroken Department crutches, zimmer frames, walking sticks and a wheelchair. Thank you so much to everyone who kindly donated money, goods and time for this all to be possible.

A large donation of tennis and goal nets has now been processed ready for working into camouflage netting. These came from John Clarke. Another donation of tennis nets was received from the Roehampton Club, we are grateful for their continuing support. Over the summer we ran a Corporate Camouflage Net Making Day at the British Standards Institute, where Rosie was scheduled to speak but unfortunately had Covid and couldn’t attend. They completed a whole net in a day. If people are looking for activities to help with corporate volunteering days or team building then a camouflage net day might be a possibility?

We sent 40 drains bags to Charing Cross Hospital, Department of Breast Surgery. 

Rosie was given an award at a gala lunch organised by Regenerate Rise, to mark the Scrubbery contributions to community life in Putney and Roehampton. It was presented by the Deputy Mayor and Fleur Anderson. This was a complete stitch up, Rosie had no idea that she was getting an award, she went along to help with the raffle and support the organisers!

Winter call-out.

We are collecting items for Ukraine.
Adult winter weight sleeping bags, yoga mats, mens t-shirts, mens jog bottoms, fire extinguishers and fire blankets, mens trainers and boots. Can be lightly used. New mens socks and underpants.

Thank you to Lettie for her hard work on the newsletter over the last 18 months. We are looking for someone who would like to help with the newsletters and publicity. If that is you please contact us.