NIGHTINGALE

I promised myself that I would not add to the plethora of blog posts being based/written around the pandemic. But because in some ways this is good news, I would like to share it with you.

“Necessity is the mother of invention”
Attributed to Plato, Ancient Greek Philosopher.

Though we’ve been on the planet for a relatively short length of time (Earth is 4.5 billion years old), modern Homo Sapiens have dreamed up and created some amazing and  sometimes far-out, things

And now we find ourselves in a strange new world where requirements that we couldn’t have imagined even 6 months ago are out in the open and require clever thinking ( out of the box) to achieve the necessary results.  So inventions once more come to the fore.

One such example is the newly created NHS Nightingale Hospital in London’s Dockside area.

It became apparent that in the UK and in a short space of time, large numbers of ICU beds would be required as the pandemic progressed.

It was determined that such a facility could be acquired with clever multi-discipline thinking.

The London ExCel Centre,  a large exhibition and conference centre in London’s Docklands area. was chosen to be converted to a hospital hosting up to 4,000 patients. And within nine days, the conversion was complete.

We are told by the BBC News, that in nine days “the 87,328 square metres of double exhibition halls, have been fitted out with the framework for more than 80 wards, each with 42 beds. Some 500 fully-equipped beds, with oxygen and ventilators, are already in place and there is space for another 3,500.”

The centre was chosen for reasons other than its size. It is served by public transport links, necessary for the thousands of staff members required to operate a hospital of this size, and its proximity to the London City Airport which can be used to bring in supplies and equipment.

According to the Principal of the firm leading the project “The scale and timeframe for the construction were unlike previous healthcare projects and architects were coming up with designs almost as building needed to get underway.”

We  are also told that several more such facilities are planned for other parts of the United Kingdom.

And while we wish that this was not a necessity, we have to applaud Britain’s National Health Service for coming up with this clever solution.

To read the full report from the BBC click here.

And to end this rather dismal post with a laugh –

Thanks to Jo Marshall for sharing this on FaceBook.

 

 

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