Exhausted NHS workers given free food by volunteers with emergency services under pressure
NHS workers in accident and emergency centres are facing extreme pressures right and volunteers at one charity were at hand to give them free food and drink.
Volunteers from Khalsa Aid, a group which provides humanitarian aid in disaster areas, were dispatched in London in the early hours of this morning to distribute free snacks.
It comes amid A&E units during a winter crisis with record waiting times and ambulances facing long queues outside.
Khalsa Aid volunteers have been giving out free food and drink to 150 NHS workers and patients a night at several hospitals in London since December 22 last year.
The group has spent more than £7,000 on handouts so far and plans to spend another £600 so it can continue to every weekend.
Yesterday, St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which offers services for more than 3.5 million, declared a critical incident owing to ‘significant pressures on flow within our hospital and need to discharge a number of patients’.
A dozen NHS trusts and ambulance providers have reported red alerts, with officials citing rising flu cases prompting delays and overcrowding.
The Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) has estimated that 300 to 500 people a week are dying as a result of emergency care waits.
This week prime minister Rishi Sunak revealed plans to help tackle the NHS crisis in his first major speech of 2023, vowing to increase hospital bed capacity by 7,000 and roll out more at home care and provide new funding to discharge people into social care in the community, freeing up beds.
Mr Sunak also called for ‘reasonable dialogue” with the unions amid nurses going on strike over pay on the January 18 and 19.
In a post on their Twitter page, Khalsa Aid said: ‘It’s the least we can do to help our #NHSHeroes who are working in challenging times.’
Khalsa Aid CEO Ravi Singh said: ‘This is our way of saying thank you to the NHS staff. If we consider NHS workers our heroes and we clap for them, it’s time we stood for them in any way we can.
‘We all require help at one time or another and this is a time to be supportive and help out.’
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