Schools and community groups across Scotland are helping out in the COVID-19 pandemic by producing personal protective equipment (PPE) for local businesses and care providers.
In Aberdeenshire, Banff Academy has created over 1,400 face masks for frontline workers. The council is now planning a series of hubs to increase manufacturing. LiveLife Aberdeenshire has donated 3D printers and the council’s economic development team is looking for local businesses that could produce face shields or provide PPE.
In Angus, eight secondary schools have joined forces to provide masks for NHS Tayside’s Community Assessment Hubs and University of Dundee staff who are handling COVID-19 samples. The schools are also taking orders from local nursing homes and medical practices.
Teachers at Oban High School in Argyll and Bute created a prototype face shield, which was approved by the NHS, then set about creating hundreds of masks to be distributed by the local community hub. The school has also donated 200 pairs of safety goggles, gloves, sanitiser and aprons from its science and technical labs to local groups and organisations.
In Dundee, secondary schools have donated over 1,000 pairs of goggles and Grove Academy has made more than 500 visors using its 3D printers.
3D printing labs have also been set up in Stewarton Academy and Kilmarnock Academy in East Ayrshire to provide face shields to the Health and Social Care Partnership and Acute Services in NHS Ayrshire and Arran.
Eight secondary schools in East Dunbartonshire have together made over 2,000 face shields.
Schools across Falkirk have managed to produce thousands of visors thanks to donations of materials from other schools, organisations and individuals in the area. They’re now in use in local care homes and businesses such as pharmacies.
In Midlothian too, secondary schools are using 3D printers and laser cutters to produce hundreds of visors which have been donated to the local community hospital and care homes.
The technological and art and design departments at several schools in South Lanarkshire have been making visors, goggles and other equipment which can be used by front-line staff in the NHS. All equipment is sent to the NHS to ensure it meets quality standards and it then decides the best place for it to be distributed to.
And in West Lothian, several schools have been producing face visors which have been delivered to the Health and Social Care Partnership for distribution.