A CHARITY set up at the start of the coronavirus pandemic has been overwhelmed by the response following the work that has been carried out.

Masks for Scotland raised £439,197, and with the help of volunteers, donated 1,100,000 PPE items to frontline staff across Scotland.

Professor Jill Belch, her daughter Joanna van der Ham, and music producer Mr Hudson spearheaded the fundraising efforts.

The first purchases of PPE were delivered on April 8, 2020, to Jill’s home where she began to coordinate a mammoth volunteer logistics effort and social media campaign, to distribute PPE across the whole of Scotland.

Commenting on the end of the appeal, Jill said: “Thanks to the generosity of all of our donors we believe that this PPE will have helped save lives.

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"Thanks to my three daughters it was a real family affair, I could not have done it without them.

"Joanna helped to set up the charity and event and Lucy was chief packer with me while Janette organised 600 delivery arrangements with drivers. 

"Our seven neighbours provided QA checks of isolation gowns while friends and all wonderful volunteers distributed PPE Scotland-wide. Our 40 volunteer drivers completed 600 runs all over Scotland delivering around 1m pieces of PPE from April to December 2020.

“I wish we could share all the many hundreds of thank you emails we receive but here is one: 'Thank you so much for doing this. It has made a massive difference in our GP practice, so huge thanks to all. Really appreciated by us and our patients who themselves felt safer when they saw us protected. We cannot thank you enough.'

“Messages like these are such a huge reward for all this work.”