By Covid-19 intensive care consultant appointed OBE
A doctor who helped to lead the national response to Covid-19 has been appointed OBE for services to critical care, as part of the Queen’s Birthday Honours.
Dr Alison Pittard, 55, from Collingham in West Yorkshire, was tasked primarily with ensuring critical care was streamlined across NHS services.
She also helped teams across the UK adapt to new methods of treatment as the crisis unfolded.
Throughout the peak of the first wave, she worked “18-hour-days”.
A foot injury meant working from home during the early stages.
Dr Pittard, who has been a consultant in anaesthesia and intensive care medicine since 1997, said she was “shocked and completely overwhelmed” by the honour.
She was elected as dean of The Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine in 2019.
Responding to the honour, Dr Pittard said:
“To have intensive care medicine and the NHS recognised is just amazing.
“The award represents all of those people who were trained rapidly and were redeployed to help us manage patients.”
Dr Alison Pittard is just one of numerous figures from the North of England to be awarded for their services during the ongoing pandemic.
Samantha Siddall, 32, has been appointed MBE for her work with Edlington Community Organisation (ECO) in Doncaster.
Since the beginning of lockdown, she and a team of volunteers have supported at least 4,000 vulnerable people in the city with food parcels, care packages and check-in services.
Paul Billam, a 59-year-old bus driver in Barnsley, has been also been awarded. He was given a British Empire Medal (BEM) for services to transport and the community during the pandemic.
Returning to his former workplace, Grimsby Teacher Zane Powles will also be made an MBE at Buckingham Palace.
During lockdown, Mr Powles walked 7.5 miles a day for 17 weeks, totalling more than 600 miles, to ensure children were still provided with their school meals.
The Queen’s Birthday Honours were delayed this year due to social-distancing restrictions.
A ceremony is scheduled to take place at Buckingham Palace.
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