We were contacted by Richard Payne who works for the South East Coast Ambulance Service to tell us about his plan to make spinal boards from sheets of softwood structural ply, for use by Ukrainian emergency teams in Central/East Ukraine.  Richard had been sending out medical equipment including ex-NHS stretchers and spinal boards to Ukraine but had run out of stock of spinal boards.  We were so touched to hear about this amazing work Richard is doing for Ukraine that we were pleased to donate some sheets of 18mm softwood structural ply.

With volunteer help from Dave Nunn of DN Designs in Bordon and these materials, supplied by our Bordon branch, a number of spinal boards were created from our softwood structural ply.  These spinal boards (above) were going straight into action in October 2022 with Ukraine’s emergency teams to extract casualties safely.

This further batch of casualty evacuation stretchers (below) was also made with our materials for the emergency teams in Eastern Ukraine in November 2022, and was due to reach the Dnipro area by the end of that month.