A Wirral physician has spent the final two years on a “curler coaster journey” serving to the struggle in opposition to covid within the UK, India and overseas.
In simply two weeks in late 2020, Frank Joseph, 46, arrange a lab in Liverpool processing PCR assessments, which “introduced the worth down immediately from £350 to £99” per check for journey and employment functions. With a promise to return outcomes by the midnight after testing, later decreasing this to 3 hours due to new know-how, Frank aimed to chop out the travel-related “anxiousness” of being on the mercy of mail delays. Since then, his firm DAM Well being has been a part of a world rollout of Covid-19 testing.
DAM Well being was testing roughly 25,000 folks a day by the pandemic’s peak, with 68 excessive road clinics all inside two hours of labs in London, Manchester and Edinburgh, together with Northern Eire, Spain, Mexico and the Czech Republic. At one level, the corporate employed as much as 1,5000 staff. Frank, a diabetes physician at Countess of Chester Hospital, mentioned: “A number of the folks we have been working with on the time have been out of labor, business began coming to a crashing halt, and it was good to be ready the place we have been serving society and folks, business, commerce and journey, and we have been in a position to create some job alternatives.”
READ MORE:Covid infections rise by practically two thirds in Liverpool Metropolis Area
The corporate’s speedy development and success allowed it to accomplice with The Hope Basis, sending cash, covid testing kits, PPE and ventilators to the charity serving to children residing on the streets of Kolkata, India, the nation Frank is from. Greater than half 1,000,000 covid deaths have been recorded in India for the reason that begin of the pandemic, and though nearly 2bn vaccines have been delivered, with tons of of hundreds of thousands extra to run out because of a drop in demand, solely 64% of the nation’s inhabitants is totally vaccinated, BBC Information experiences.
Now primarily based in The Backbone at Paddington Village, DAM Well being’s position as one of many main suppliers of covid assessments within the UK has been recognised in awards and industrial offers. Final yr, DAM Well being purchased the naming rights to Edinburgh Rugby’s new 7,800-capacity stadium, with the corporate to offer all covid testing to the membership and Scottish Rugby Union groups, facilitated by testing labs put in on the BT Murrayfield campus the place it’s positioned.
In November, Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson introduced Frank, who lives in Hoylake on the Wirral, with a lifetime achievement award at a European Variety Awards ceremony in London. Frank mentioned: “As a medical skilled, accolades within the public eye are all the time a bit of bit odd. We do not all the time get recognition in that approach. That is not what we work for, it is not what we signed up for. It is good, it was very, very humbling, to be recognised.”
DAM Well being is constant its work on covid, whereas collaborating with the Pandemic Institute, additionally primarily based at The Backbone, to organize for future pandemics. Frank is trying to increase the corporate’s providing right into a wider vary of providers within the coming weeks. Because of information of upper dangers of problems from Covid-19 confronted by folks with hypertension, kidney illness, coronary heart illness and lung illness, Frank believes folks are actually extra “conscious of the should be wholesome”.
He hopes to faucet into this by offering a “single unifying providing” of diagnostic instruments, with dieticians and on-line GPs at hand to supply recommendation. Frank desires to see folks begin getting blood assessments each six months to a yr, earlier than “ready to get in poor health”. He mentioned: “What we need to do is give folks the chance to have common well being checks to regulate their blood stress, regulate their ldl cholesterol, regulate their potential danger of growing diabetes.”
All through its success right here and overseas, DAM Well being has remained a “Liverpudlian” firm, and provides again to the area people. Final yr, it sponsored the Pandemic Institute’s 10 “excellence awards” of £5,000 every for PhD college students on the College of Liverpool, Liverpool College of Tropical Medication, and Liverpool John Moores College. Frank mentioned: “We’re a Liverpool-based firm. We’re all Liverpudlian impressed via and thru in our coronary heart.
‘Anti-vaxxer’ hurled rocks at Covid vaccine centres after seeing ‘proof on the web’
What number of occasions are you able to get covid and what to do for those who check constructive
Omicron signs to look out for for those who’re totally vaccinated
NHS warning over textual content rip-off that might steal your financial institution particulars
What does a faint line on a covid check imply and when you’ll recuperate
