Enniskillen local Gordon Annan, along with fellow motorcyclists, has been helping the PPE effort by collecting and distributing donations to hospitals, care homes and medical centres across Ireland.

Speaking to The Impartial Reporter, Gordon explained how the initiative began: “Throughout Ireland, North and South, a lot of us motorcyclists do a competition called The Irish Photo Rally and when St. James’ Hospital in Dublin put out an appeal that they urgently needed PPE, one of the guys, Merv Colton, realised that the network is in every corner of Ireland so they could gather PPE but they could also deliver it immediately, so that’s how it started.”

“A new separate group Bravo Charlie Tango - Bikers Coming Through (BCT) has now been formed with its’ own Facebook page and assignment deployments moved to WhatsApp regional groups as the effort is needed to uplift and deliver PPE throughout Ireland north and south for many hospitals, care homes and medical centres. We are motorcyclists doing our bit in this time of crisis,” added Gordon.

In conjunction with The Church Mouse, a charity shop run by Enniskillen Presbyterian Church, Gordon has also been transporting consignments of white shirts to local sewers who are repurposing them to create scrubs.

The white shirts had been donated to the charity shop quite some time ago and although a number had been sent to Operation Rescue in Ethiopia and sold in the shop, there were still a lot left when the shop closed its doors during the pandemic.

“I’m a member of Enniskillen Presbyterian and the woman who runs The Church Mouse rang my wife Alison and asked if the shirts would be of any use,” said Gordon, adding that his direct contacts in the ICU and Radiology at SWAH pointed him in the direction of Margaret Houston in Dromore who is involved in NI Scrubs, a group who are making scrubs for NHS staff.

“I delivered to her two consignments, 440 brand new shirts in the first one, 700 in the second one. This gives them a head start because they are able to convert those shirts which meant they weren’t starting from rolls of fabric. Then in my own network there was another request and I was able to take over 400 away to Co. Kildare where I link up with another rider, me in my van and him with his trailer to go to Co. Kerry to be made into scrubs,” Gordon said.

There are over 40 riders in the Ulster regional group of BCT and several hundred in the Republic of Ireland.

“In total in the last four weeks we have done over 1,000 deliveries. We have a central control where Lynda and Orla keep us in order,” said Gordon, noting that their contact tracing log for each and every delivery is vital: “Other local motorcyclists involved in BCT are Alan Parkinson from Tempo, Kevin Francis from Maguiresbridge and Colm McGurran from Enniskillen.”

Last week, Gordon travelled to Kildare to lift a prototype gown for testing in SWAH by Lewis Quinn, a technician in ICU before it goes into production: “This gown has been developed by Merv, the innovator and founder of our network BCT so there’s always a brain behind these things and it’s a fella in Kildare.”

“It’s very important that people who want to help are given the opportunity to help and we are not medical people so it’s a privilege to be able to help in this way the people who are on the front line. Our job is easy, we don’t have the fear of going into work to what they are facing,” shared Gordon.

“The response we get when we deliver either to hospitals or out in the community is so rewarding and we see these people know the support and care from the community,” he told this newspaper.