We now have 3,700 Bromley people who have volunteered to help vulnerable people locally. They are being marshalled by 50 members of the Council staff and the whole endeavour is being coordinated by the Bromley Emergency Control Centre (BECC) in the Council offices (photograph).
Within Bromley Borough there are now are 2,600 people who are extremely vulnerable or who may need a bit of help; so far 690 of them have come from declaring just that on the Council website.
I know a lot of information has been given out but I want to use the rest of this post to state, even if it is a repetition of what I have put out before, how people who need help can get it – just in case they do not know already.
Let me start with people who are extremely vulnerable because of a medical condition. From the Government’s website folk who are deemed extremely vulnerable include:
• Solid organ transplant recipients.
• People with specific cancers:
o people with cancer who are undergoing active chemotherapy
o people with lung cancer who are undergoing radical radiotherapy
o people with cancers of the blood or bone marrow such as leukaemia, lymphoma or myeloma who are at any stage of treatment
o people having immunotherapy or other continuing antibody treatments for cancer
o people having other targeted cancer treatments which can affect the immune system, such as protein kinase inhibitors or PARP inhibitors
o people who have had bone marrow or stem cell transplants in the last 6 months, or who are still taking immunosuppression drugs
• People with severe respiratory conditions including all cystic fibrosis, severe asthma and severe COPD.
• People with rare diseases and inborn errors of metabolism that significantly increase the risk of infections (such as SCID, homozygous sickle cell).
• People on immunosuppression therapies sufficient to significantly increase risk of infection.
• Women who are pregnant with significant heart disease, congenital or acquired.
People with those conditions are defined as extremely vulnerable and they should register at the following web address if they have not done so already: https://www.gov.uk/coronavirus-extremely-vulnerable. I gather that the Central Government is directly contacting people with these conditions to provide further advice and guidance as to what they should do.
When people go on that Government website they will be asked if they need urgent help with food or medicines, which will be arranged directly to their homes by Central Government. Locally teams from the BECC are making checks to ensure this direct support is being received. From my briefing with the Leader of the Council, the Chief Executive and BECC’s staff yesterday I gather these checks have confirmed this Central Government system is working. Great because it also includes food parcels in some instances.
But there are also a large number of people who, although they may not be extremely vulnerable for medical reasons, are also needing assistance. For instance, they may be self-isolating with or without Coronavirus symptoms and they cannot leave their homes. Perhaps their families, who normally help them, cannot do so at the moment. Or perhaps they may need assistance in getting food and medicines, or even something simple like giving their dog a walk maybe.
For those Bromley residents who just need a bit of help and are not on the Government’s extremely vulnerable list there is another way. They should register with Bromley Council at: https://www.bromley.gov.uk/info/1113/volunteering/1410/volunteers_and_r….