FeedNHS, the not-for-profit campaign started by Matt Lucas, Damian Lewis, Helen McCrory and LEON Restaurant’s John Vincent is growing and from this week aims to go nationwide to help provide hot, healthy and nutritious meals to NHS staff on the front line during the Coronavirus pandemic.
FeedNHS has joined up with Mealforce, Feed our Frontline and Baxter Storey to co-ordinate the provision of food for critical care teams. Other high street brands are working alongside LEON, including Dishoom, Wasabi, Farmer J, Tortilla, Franco Manca and Wrap it Up.
From this week (Monday, April 20), FeedNHS and its industry partners will be feeding NHS teams in Aberdeen, Glasgow and Edinburg, with ongoing discussions to expand to Manchester, Birmingham, Brighton and Cardiff.
In the first two weeks of fundraising, FeedNHS reached £1m. The coalition now has the scale to serve more than one million meals and believes it can sustain serving 25,000 meals per day across 55 hospitals for the next six weeks. Fundraising is ongoing to enable this provision to be extended beyond the next six weeks.
Carol Haraldsson, Head of Charitable Giving at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust says: “Many doctors and nurses in critical care units do not have time to leave wards to get a good meal. Support from the FeedNHS coalition and funding has made a massive difference to our frontline team at UCLH, helping to get meals to NHS staff that need them most.”
Crussh Fit Food & Juice Bars have also joined the FeedNHS campaign and will this week deliver 2,000 hot meals to the Royal Marsden Hospitals in Chelsea and Sutton.
