Providing PPE to the NHS: Lt Blackwood
As part of the Military’s response to the Coronavirus outbreak, personnel have been delivering personal protection equipment (PPE) to all NHS hospitals, learning to drive oxygen tanks and also in the medevac of critically ill patients from remote communities
We hear from Lt Blackwood from 4 Battalion Royal Logistics Corps (RLC) as he worked through the night to ensure the delivery of PPE to NHS hospitals in London.
This is what he had to say 👇
‘We all join the Army to go on operations and with that, we get a lot of training and experience given to us, in this instance we had the opportunity to use those skills and experience to assist our government in the battle against COVID-19.
‘At the moment we are picking up face masks to help create that barrier between doctors and their patients so they can carry on safely working throughout the day and carry on with their treatment.
‘It may be the case that some of the drivers have got sick, they don’t have the delivery capacity so we’ve stepped in to help lift and keep that logistical chain moving forward — that’s what we do in the army, we are more than capable in doing that in the Civilian world.
‘We are backfilling those spots taking place where people may be of sick or had to take extra time off work, we’ll just step in conduct that role and as people come back to work we’ll step out again.
‘MACA is Military Aid to Civilian Authorities so that could mean the military stepping in to do anything to support civil authorities. The most common thing we have seen is the military stepping in to help with flooding, right now that’s us helping to deliver PPE from a depot up in St Helens to NHS hospitals in London.
- Military Aid to Civil Authorities: The COVID Support Force
- Military Aid to Civil Authorities (MACA): A force for good
‘The way we get tasked is we are told the army needs to step in and do a task. The army will then prioritise which regiments they are going to task, for example for the flood relief it can be almost anyone because its guys having to lift or shift sandbags. But for delivery, it comes to us the RLC because we are a driving troop.
We have the trucks, the lift and the technically skilled soldiers to drive up and down the country delivering the PPE wherever it needs to be as quickly and efficiently as possible.’
