Why we’re having one final Clap for Carers this weekend to celebrate our NHS

The NHS is celebrating its 72^nd birthday and we’re all being encouraged to get out on the doorsteps this Sunday and show our appreciation again with the first of an annual Clap for Carers.

The founder of the original clapping campaign is backing a move to make July 5, the NHS’s anniversary, a commemorative day when we can all come together, in streets and on balconies, for a collective thank you.

On 4 July, the night before, people will be asked to put a light in their windows in remembrance of all those lost to coronavirus.

Never in its history has the NHS been so needed or so appreciated for the tremendous work it does.

Staff on the frontline across the region have put themselves and their own health at risk in order to save so many lives since the pandemic first hit Britain.

On Merseyside, we have more reasons to be thankful than most because we have some of the finest hospitals and health care professionals in the country.

We are lucky here to have centres of excellence like Clatterbridge Cancer Centre, already renowned globally for its cancer treatment and now with Liverpool’s first specialist cancer hospital, and Alder Hey which is a world leader in children’s health, right on our doorstep.

Pic credit Paul Karalius

We have the Royal, Aintree and Broadgreen Hospitals, all working tirelessly to provide the best possible standards of care, as well as the city’s GPs and walk-in centres who have kept a strong, reassuring community presence and helped to take the strain off the emergency departments. It was only yesterday The Walton Centre was named 6th in the country for best overall patient experience.

It’s not just those treating Covid-19 patients in intensive care who we have to thank – every single member of the NHS works as a team, and they’ve all played a vital part in keeping us as safe and well as possible. Every one of them is a hero.

Working around the clock, they’ve sacrificed time with their own families so that other families don’t lose their loved ones. Some have even opted to protect their partners, children and parents by living apart from them while the crisis was at its height.

Alder Hey

Especially over the past few months, NHS staff have put the health of patients ahead of their own. Many have contracted the virus as a result and some have sadly died.

That’s why, for 10 weeks during lockdown, millions of people came out every Thursday to clap, bang pots and pans and anything else they could lay their hands on to show their respect.

So many more lives would have been tragically lost if it hadn’t been for their dedication and we can honestly never thank them enough for that.

But this Sunday we can show just how much it’s meant to every single family in our region.

At 5pm, join in the first of what we hope will be a yearly Clap for Carers to celebrate the NHS’s birthday and say the most heartfelt of thank yous.

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