Late last year Knutsford Rotary Club offered to assist The Knutsford Medical Partnership to facilitate the vaccine rollout at the Knutsford Community Hospital having realised that the location and layout of the hospital was a recipe for gridlock and frustration.

Several of our members are trained in traffic management (a fund-raising service that we usually sell to local event organisers) so it seemed that we could offer our help with the. stewarding of people visiting for their jab and organisation of traffic around the site.

Our offer was readily accepted and we embarked on the largest community service project in our 82 year history.

“Starting in early January, we enlisted the support of several other Knutsford volunteer groups and organised the operation into to two hour shifts of four helpers. To date (end of May) we’ve completed over 1200 man hours, supporting over 25,000 vaccinations on 45 days of almost 7 hours a day, and we expect to continue into August.” Say our organisers Alan Ingram and Tony Booth.

Trained Rotarians are always appointed as the shift leader and our safety officer runs frequent training sessions for the other volunteers.

It was soon apparent that several issues were causing problems which had to be addressed.

First. The hospital entrance road is very narrow due to residential parking meaning that an effective traffic flow system had to be devised.

Second. The parking had to be organised so that it did not interfere with other patients and staff who use the hospital for its normal function.

Third. Patient access was electronically organised by appointment time.
We had to prevent early arrivals from causing delays by staff needing to search for their computer records. This had previously impeded the vaccination process and caused long queues.”

There is no doubt that this massive ongoing challenge involving over two hundred volunteers from the town has been the most influential project ever undertaken by Knutsford Rotary Club. It has attracted massive local publicity including a two page article in the “In Cheshire Magazine” along with membership enquiries and spontaneous donations.

In true Rotary spirit-----Service Above Self.