Coronavirus: Family business calls for factories to join PPE mission

Surinder and Gurdeep Dharni have repurposed their clothing factory to make PPE for the NHS

A family-run clothing factory that diversified to produce personal protective equipment (PPE) has called on other businesses to do the same.

Kiranjit Dharni's family have a factory in Birmingham and have recruited volunteers from across the Midlands, Bedfordshire and Greater London to create scrubs and gowns for NHS staff.

They have recruited about 800 volunteer sewers and processed about 8,000 items.

Ms Dharni said she had had requests from all over the country.

She added she needed other factories to support the effort.

Rohit and his mother, pictured in London, are among those volunteering to make PPE

She said she had received a call asking for thousands of items of PPE from an NHS trust in Birmingham and was now struggling to keep up with demand.

"I can't help in Northern Ireland when I can't keep up with Birmingham," she said, "but we just have to get it done".

The family is not making any money from producing PPE, she said, in fact the business has "taken a hit".

"It's an emotional one, not a business one," she said, adding that everyone "has lost someone in our community".

Volunteers at a factory in Birmingham have made about 1,300 pieces of equipment

The Dharni family is well known in the West Midlands Sikh community as musicians and so were able to recruit a lot of volunteers from gurdwaras in the region.

"It's an incredible cross-community effort," Ms Dharni, who is a secondary school geography teacher, said.

Volunteers in Bedfordshire have also taken up the challenge

She and her father, Gurdeep Singh Dharni, have designed an approved PPE garment pack which details measurements, patterns and health and safety guidelines which they want to share with other clothing factories.

Hospitals go through 150,000 gowns a day and the UK has had problems manufacturing and distributing enough to keep NHS staff protected against coronavirus.

"We're happy to share resources so other companies can support their local NHS," Ms Dharni said. "We can't do it alone."

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