Vivek Ramakrishnan
On 04 February 2021, the entire team of Eleanor Hospital Logistics came together to honour Sir Captain Tom Moore. Across all the NHS trust hospitals that the team serves, they kept 1 minute of silence to remember the contributions that Captain Tom had made in his lifetime.
Captain Tom fought for Britain during World War II, and when the pandemic began, he once again rose to the occasion. On 6 April 2020, with his 100th birthday on the horizon, he began a fundraising campaign for NHS Charities Together, a group of charities supporting staff, volunteers and patients in the NHS. On 16th April 2020, he completed one hundred 25-metre lengths of his garden, ten lengths per day, with the help of a walking frame. The endeavour was called “Tom’s 100th Birthday Walk for the NHS”. Prompted by the success of his first walk, he started a second round. On the closing day of his campaign, he had raised nearly £39 million with the expected tax rebates.
His motivation shares many characteristics of our Eleanor Hospital Logistics Team’s:
“. . . Our hospital teams have since the outbreak been at war with this awful virus and like Captain Tom, we all stood on the front line behind our NHS doctors and the nurses, keeping them in plentiful supply of PPE and medical products.”
These words might as well have been spoken by a member of our logistics team. Throughout the pandemic, the team has not only worked hard to replenish hospitals with life-saving clinical supplies, including PPE and testing kits, they have also shown great bravery and courage in entering Intensive Care Red Zones and at times being exposed to incredibly sad situations of deceased Covid-19 in-patients taken out of our hospitals.
As keyworkers, they have also cancelled pre-booked days and continued working through weekends and the festive period. Our work has been so critical to the success of the NHS fight against the pandemic that hospital board members and stakeholders have expressed their incredible gratitude to Eleanor, to which Tim Orchard, the Imperial Chief Executive Officer (CEO), also visited the St. Mary’s Eleanor’s Imperial College Trust Teams in person to thank us.
You can read all about his visit HERE.
