www.nhsfacevisorsupplies.co.uk

The NHS is currently facing a severe shortage of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) as a result of the Covid-19 outbreak, exacerbated by the interruption of supply chains from China.

In the coming weeks, it is predicted that these healthcare workers will be seeing thousands of sufferers of COVID 19, exposing themselves to high loads of the virus and putting themselves at risk (over 10% of healthcare workers have COVID in Italy and to date 43 doctors have perished from this awful disease).

An essential piece of PPE is the universal face visor which is now part of the WHO & PHE recommended kit for examining these patients. Wearing this can significantly lower the risk of transmission and lower exposure to large volumes of the virus.

Across the country, people with access to 3D printing and appropriate equipment are able to make an approved face mask for the healthcare workers to use on the front line and we would like to do this without making any profit.

My husband, Christopher Grilli, is a design engineer. Everyone who knows him knows how much he loves to design and create, including kids’ electric cars; a life size R2D2 and a Santa’s sleigh for the school fayre!

In the beginning, four generous families started the ball rolling by buying a 3D printer each, and another family generously donated filament. Since then, many people donated and we were able to buy more printers and materials so that, by the end of that week, along with Christopher's three brothers, Anthony, Richard and Raymond, we were producing 900 shields per week!

However, this was a drop in the ocean in comparison to the requirements of the NHS, so we continued to fundraise in order to start producing the parts through an injection moulding process.

As employees of Nissan, Anthony and Christopher decided to approach their employer to see if they could help in anyway. Nissan Manufacturing were immediately keen to do what they could, and soon offered to pay for the injection moulding tool! Not only this, but they offered to collect the parts from our three suppliers and take care of all the packaging too, at no cost.

After several sleepless nights of the Grilli brothers working together to make the design suitable for injection moulding, they were all set.

As of today (10 April 2020) we are able to produce around 50,000 visors per week, and Nissan are looking into doubling this by paying for a second injection moulding tool! This means that NHS Trusts nationally can buy the visors at cost price (absolutely no profits going to Nissan) and we can continue to support hospitals, hospices, care homes and GP surgeries from our crowdfunding.

So far our visors have been sent to the following hospitals:

Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Barnet General, Boston Hospital, Chelmsford Hospital, Good Hope Hospital, Great Ormond Street Hospital, Hammersmith Hospital, High Wycombe Hospital, Kingston Hospital, London Ambulance Service, Manchester Royal Infirmary, Northwick Park, Queen Charlotte & Chelsea, Queen Elizabeth Birmingham, Royal Free, Royal Derby Hospital, Sheffield Northern General Hospital, Stoke Mandeville Hospital, St Peter's Hospital, The Royal London Hospital, UCLH, UHCW, Walsall Hospital, Warwick Hospital and Whipps Cross Hospital.

If you would like to help the efforts of the frontline NHS workers in primary care, then your donation would be gratefully received.

When there is no longer a need for these visors, we will donate all printers bought with the money raised to secondary schools that need them.

If you are an NHS hospital who would like to place an order, please get in touch (emily@nhsfacevisorsupplies.co.uk)