Wimmera Health Care Group CEO Catherine Morley has praised the community for its support during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

Businesses, service groups and individuals from the region have shown their appreciation for our frontline health workers with gifts, donations, deeds and correspondence. Ms Morley said her team had been encouraged and appreciative of the generosity displayed by others.

“The last few months have been the most challenging period and having devoted a lifetime to health care I can comfortably say that there has been nothing like it before,” Ms Morley said.

“I’ve been very proud of our team because they have been amazingly resilient throughout and continue to be,” she said.

The support from the community has been a big help and it has told us all that everyone is behind us and appreciative that we are here for them.”

The biggest support came from the WHCG Ladies Auxiliary who stepped in at the start with a $50,000 cheque.
Auxiliary chair Denise Queale said her committee normally worked on fund raising for a specific item such as a bariatric bed or a monitor.

“When the pandemic started, we just decided to make a big donation and let the health service decide where the money could be best utilised,” she said.

“As volunteers we were not going to be able to help physically but we wanted to show as much support as possible.”

Mrs Queale said the pandemic had diverted the annual fashion parade which was regularly the auxiliary’s biggest fund raiser.

“The fashion parade was due to be staged in April but we’ve had to pull the pin for now and hopefully we can run it later in the year.”

The auxiliary’s donation was used to buy three InteliVue patient monitors for the Emergency Department and Intensive Care Unit. The devices are used to safely monitor critically ill patients and will be extremely useful whether or not Covid-19 cases become prevalent.
Ms Morley said numerous local businesses had offered goods and services to frontline health workers.

“We’ve had the likes of Sheer Urbane Hair providing complementary shampoos and styles, Dominoes giving free pizzas, several Horsham cafes distributing hundreds of coffee vouchers through Love Your Neighbour and beauty products donated by local distributors such as the Body Shop.

“We’ve also had national companies like Optus offering free phone services to nurses and Thrifty providing free car rental.

“It’s been overwhelming and I thank everyone who has contributed and shown their support.”

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