Liverpool Hope University has been presented with a special plaque to celebrate its efforts in supplying a Covid-19 vaccination centre for the people of south Liverpool.
Rewind to March of this year and the Government was attempting to roll out one of the most important national vaccination programmes in modern history.
Having already launched an on-site Coronavirus testing centre, Hope partnered with Liverpool-based public service design agency, Capacity, and three local Primary Care Networks (PCNs) to instigate a vaccination hub.
This was housed in the Sports Hall on the Hope Park campus.
By September of this year, some 83,000 doses of the vaccine had been administered to the communities of south Liverpool from Hope - at a rate of 1,200 people per day.
That Herculean effort was aided by almost 200 student vaccinators who joined the project as volunteers.
And this week the key figures who helped make the vaccination centre a reality - including the Clinical Directors from the three PCNs - met at Hope to hand over a commemorative plaque to Professor Gerald Pillay, Vice-Chancellor & Rector of Hope, and Dr Penny Haughan, Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost, thanking the University for the important role it played.
(Pictured, from left-right: Dr Rob McGuire Clinical Director of the Picton PCN, Dr Jamie Hampson Clinical Director the SWAGGA PCN, Prof Gerald Pillay, Dr Penny Haughan, Dr Ayokunle Adebanjo Clinical Director of the Childwall and Wavertree PCN, John Pilcher from Capacity)
Professor Pillay said: “Liverpool Hope University has a real commitment to both social justice and to the local community.
“In times of crisis, we come together. This is what we do.
“And so we were honoured to be able to host the vaccination centre and to work with the talented and dedicated individuals from the local Primary Care Networks as well as Capacity.
“We will display this plaque with pride.”
The three PCNs who contributed to the vaccination centre were the Childwall and Wavertree Network (CWN), the Speke, Woolton, Allerton, Gateacre, Garston and Aigburth (SWAGGA) Network, and the Picton Network.
GP Dr Rob McGuire, of the Picton PCN, praised the students who contributed to the Centre, saying: “The student volunteers performed a really important role because we simply couldn’t run the centre without having patients being queued properly, for example, or told where they needed to be and what they needed to do.
“They did a really great job of helping us get patients in and out of the Centre.”
GP Dr Jamie Hampson, of the SWAGGA PCN, also praised the ‘camaraderie’ he experienced while part of the operation.
He added: “It was nice to be part of something collaborative. Everyone pulled out all the stops to make it work, which was wonderful.
“And there was also a great camaraderie between the GPs from all of the Primary Care Networks. I’ve got really fond memories of my time at Hope and I made some great friends. We continue to work closely together now.”
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Meanwhile Emma Lord, Health Director at Capacity, commented: “The team at Liverpool Hope University has shown incredible generosity with their space, supporting the PCNs to manage huge numbers of the public on their campus.
“Local volunteers and medical students have been recruited and trained at an incredible speed, filling shift after shift enabling us to vaccinate thousands of people.
“The medical teams and leaders have worked tirelessly to ensure the site has run like a well-oiled machine – it’s been the best team-building exercise we could have wished for and
demonstrates the power of the amazing people we work with.”