Almost 12,000 volunteer to help health workers with chores

A Facebook page inviting people to help healthcare workers with domestic chores has attracted almost 12,000 volunteers.

Nurse Tamzin Ingram at the new COVID-19 Clinic at the Mount Barker Hospital in Adelaide. Picture: AAP

A Perth Facebook page inviting people to “adopt a healthcare worker” has taken off, with almost 12,000 signing up within three days to help overstretched medical staff on the coronavirus frontline.

Perth man Chris Nicholas, 35, said he set up the page after realising his health-worker friends lacked the time to complete basic chores such as buying toilet paper.

He set up the Adopt a Healthcare Worker page to pair volunteers with busy medics struggling through the coronavirus crisis.

Adoptees are invited to walk a dog, take a meal, or keep in touch with the workers’ relatives to help relieve their stress.

Mr Nicholas said he was motivated because medical staff helped him through the crises of his father’s death from cancer three years ago and the loss of his close friends’ four-week-old son.

“As the world stares down the barrel of coronavirus, every healthcare worker I speak to tells me that this is their crisis,” he said. “Each and every person in this Facebook group cares.”

He said many healthcare workers had thanked him for setting up the group.

He said he expected only a dozen people to sign up, so he was shocked to see membership climb to nearly 12,000.

He is planning to roll out the site in other states, and he has been contacted by people in Britain, Canada and other countries interested in offering a similar service.