College Continues Efforts for PPE in Fight against Coronavirus

South Eastern Regional College (SERC) is continuing to answer the call for Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) by gathering its supplies to pass over to the services that need it most in the fight against Coronavirus as well as making specialist masks and face shields on 3D printers and sewing homemade scrubs and masks.

Aurla McLoughlin, Deputy Head of Enterprise and Entrepreneurship at SERC said, “We have all heard the many news reports detailing the severe shortages of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) in our hospitals and healthcare settings.   PPE is essentially any devices or appliances designed to be worn or held by an individual for protection against one or more health and safety hazards.  

She added, “As you can image, we use a lot of this equipment in the College, from rubber gloves in hair and beauty, science and animal care programmes, to plastic aprons in catering and hospitality,  to masks in motor vehicle and engineering to high viz vests in construction.    Many of these items are required in the fight against Coronavirus and since all our students are online during this unprecedented lockdown period, SERC has coordinated the collection of all the PPE in our facilities which  has been passed on to the services that need it most at this time. We are delighted to be able to pass on 19,900 pairs of gloves, 4,340 aprons, 90 rolls of paper towels, 120,600 folded paper towels, 46 masks and 60 packets of wipes.”  

The College is also working with industry specialist to produce PPE. Trevor Breadon, Head of School of Engineering and Computing added, “In the engineering programmes at SERC we have state of the art equipment which is used for teaching students to industry standards including 3D printers. A number of our staff from the Industrial Training Team have volunteered to operate this specialist equipment to produce much needed face shields for the NHS which we now have in production.  The team are turning out an initial batch of 50 with the vision to upscale production.  We have also been working with specialist industry and healthcare contacts to produce PPE in the form of a reusable face mask in which the filter can be replaced. Essentially, this means that one mask can be used many times by an individual working on the front line. These items are subject to testing and we have been in touch with the relevant authorities to let them know we can produce these items and are awaiting approval.”

SERC have also been collecting baby monitors that staff and students might have at home which they are no longer using, again, to be passed on to healthcare teams.

Staff and students at the college are also involved in sewing face masks and scrubs for NHS staff and key workers in Northern Ireland through Facebook groups, NI Scrubs Group and Covid 19 Masks Northern Ireland, which are helping to coordinate creation, collection and delivery of homemade PPE including Anna Egner, Business Development Manager at SERC and Rebekah Cunningham, Marketing Officer (currently on maternity leave).   In addition, the College’s Enterprise and entrepreneurship team have shared a mask making template and are coordinating distribution of material sewing machines to borrow for this activity, almost 30 staff and students have offered to help. Contact nlloyd@serc.ac.uk if you would like to get involved.

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