MANCHESTER, England — Following calls from the U.K.'s National Health Service (NHS), MedFetUK, a Manchester-based online medical fetish retailer, has donated its entire remaining stock of disposable scrubs to an NHS hospital in southern England.
The company says that it was contacted by the hospital with an urgent request for the personal protective equipment (PPE) that has been dwindling in stock worldwide in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak.
"We told them we only had a few sets in stock and said they could have them free of charge, if it was any help," said a MedFetUK rep. "They said, 'Yes, please.' This was not the first enquiry we've had this week either."
Media reports have shed light on the tremendous danger a shortage of PPE could pose to both healthcare workers and civilians alike.
"The longer this epidemic goes on for, if doctors feel that there is a widespread lack of personal protective equipment, then some doctors may feel they have no choice but to give up the profession they love, because they feel so abandoned by not being given the PPE that the World Health Organization recommends," Dr. Rinesh Parmar, chair of the Doctors’ Association UK, told the Guardian.
"Without adequate PPE our workforce will be decimated," an NHS staff member said. "Who will then be left to look after patients?”
The U.K. received international criticism after taking a relatively lax approach to combating the spread of the novel coronavirus.
In an update published to its website on March 5, MedFetUK told its customers that while they were aiming to continue "business as usual" as much as possible, they would take necessary measures to help combat the spread of coronavirus.
"Until the threat from the COVID-19 virus recedes," the notice reads, "we have taken a decision not to re-stock certain items once our current stocks run out," specifically referencing its stock of infection control and personal protective gear, amongst other products.
Now, faced with an unprecedented public health crisis, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who himself has tested positive for COVID-19, announced a shift to implement more stringent stay-at-home measures and has issued a call for volunteers to join the NHS and assist more vulnerable members of the population in basic tasks.
The army has also been enlisted to deliver "millions of pieces" of PPE to hospitals after infection rates skyrocketed over the weekend.
At the time of publication, the U.K. currently has more than 17,089 confirmed cases, at least 1,019 people of which have died.
The NHS has since resorted to a desperate search for more PPE items to prepare what some fear may be an imminent boom in hospitalizations. After donating its remaining stock of disposable scrubs free of charge, MedFetUK has expressed concern over the current situation.
"Hospital shouldn't need to ask us for help in a crisis," a company rep said.
"When we, a tiny company set up to serve a small section of the kink community, find ourselves being sought out as a last-resort supplier to our National Health Service in a time of crisis, something is seriously wrong," MedFetUK posted to Twitter.
"Let's be under no illusions, this is the result of a decade of chronic underfunding and cuts which has left the NHS barely able to cope under normal circumstances, much less when faced with the onslaught of a global pandemic."
