“Heartfelt thank you” as sufficient CE Marked visors now available for health board staff

Volunteer visor makers have been told to “down tools and celebrate your collective achievements” as the health board have now said they have sufficient supplies.

Mark Polin, Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board Chairman said, “Following an amazing response to our call to arms, local voluntary makers – schools and colleges, businesses, tech enthusiasts and academics, NHS staff and others – all stepped in to help produce face visors to help protect our key workers.

“The demand for this type of PPE has been huge across the globe. This placed huge pressure on our own procurement team as we were unable to purchase the additional CE Marked visors needed for frontline staff.”

“The collective willingness and effort made to step in and to assist the North Wales community has been overwhelming. We should all feel very proud of what you in the ‘maker community’ have achieved in such a short time.”

“We have now been assured that there are sufficient CE Marked visors available for BCUHB staff which means that additional visors are no longer required.”

“On behalf of the Health Board, I want to say thank you to everyone that voluntarily stepped in to help. Your assistance may be needed again in the future, but for now we want to express our sincere gratitude for everything you have done.”

Blue Sky, who have been helping coordinate the 3D printing projects around North Wales said, “As you of course know, many visor ‘makers’ across North Wales have been voluntarily producing visors to help protect key workers in North Wales during this challenging COVID-19 Response period.”

“BCUHB wanted to work closely with the voluntary maker community to help ensure that BCUHB staff and other key workers in our communities were able to access the very best quality visors possible, to ensure that visors would protect staff and not harm them or patients either. Eighty-one makers registered to provide voluntary made visors so there could be confidence in the design, materials, manufacture and decontamination of visors before they were issued for use whilst there were not sufficient CE Marked visors available.”

“We are satisfied that there are now sufficient CE Marked visors available for BCUHB staff. The production of additional visors is no longer required, but our gratitude to all makers will be felt for a very long time to come. Thanks to your incredible efforts, there is also a reserve of these voluntarily made visors ready, should they be required.”

They noted that the organisation is there if needed in the future, “BCUHB and our partners now know there is a local network of potential visor makers. Should demand exceed supply again we will contact the registered makers directly to ask for assistance.”