Surgeon helps get thousands of scrubs and gowns donated to St Mary's Hospital

An Imperial surgeon has worked with fashion retailers and clothes manufacturers to get thousands of scrubs and gowns donated to St Mary's Hospital.

Sanjay Purkayastha, Clinical Senior Lecturer in Bariatric Surgery and Consultant Surgeon for the Department Surgery and Cancer, has worked with the British Fashion Council, clothes manufacturer Fashion Enter and fashion retailer Burberry to donate thousands of surgical scrubs and gowns to St Mary’s Hospital. 

In March, as St Mary’s hospital filled up with COVID-19 patients, the doctors, nurses and healthcare professionals who provided ward care began to worry about the amount of PPE available to protect them from the virus. As someone who trained, worked, and whose children were born at St Mary’s, Mr Purkayastha wanted to help the hospital during these difficult times in any way he could. 

Mr Purkayastha contacted a number of firms about helping to keep our hospital staff safe. He was extremely happy when two separate firms responded to his call to arms and within days they had agreed to produce and donate surgical gowns for the St Mary’s Hospital. 

The first donation from Burberry sent initial samples to IPC for thorough testing. They received a glowing review and were said to be some of the best gowns they had seen. After being tested and certified for use, Burberry delivered one tonne of high-quality gowns (over 2,000) to be used at St Mary’s. 

The second donation of over 2,000 sets of scrubs came from clothes manufacturer Fashion Enter, based in Haringey, north London. The factory, whose clients include ASOS.com, M&S and John Lewis, switched from its traditional clothing production in order to cater for the thousands of health care workers treating patients amid the pandemic. This donation was a collaboration between ASOS.com, Westworld star, Thandie Newton, The Scheinberg Fund and One World Medical.

The gowns have been greatly appreciated, with staff across the Department and hospital extremely thankful to Sanjay and the partners above who stepped up in these difficult times to protect our key workers.