A former trainee paramedic who was left in a wheelchair by Covid is calling for the NHS to change its eligibility rules after being targeted by scammers.
Lucy Gatward is trying to raise £3,200 for a powered wheelchair as she doesn’t qualify for one on the NHS because of her limited ability to walk.
The 34-year-old campaigner believes the NHS should judge applicants on clinical need, functional ability and safety, instead of being excluded because they retain some ability to walk.
Lucy was nearing the end of three years of paramedic training at the University of Surrey when lockdown began, with her tenure including frontline ambulance placements at Tongham, Haslemere and Farnborough.
“Tongham was my main base and I loved every minute of it,” said Lucy, who lives near Eastleigh.
“I worked through the pandemic so it was quite full-on. I seemed to get a lot of the most urgent calls, but I guess that also made me more vulnerable.”
After months of helping some of the county’s most seriously ill patients, Lucy contracted Covid on the cusp of completing her training and never recovered.
“I developed ME/CFS, POTS and irreversible small fibre dysfunction and eventually had to give up the career I'd spent years training for,” said Lucy.
“Now I’m campaigning for better access to mobility equipment – I'm trying to turn what happened to me into something that could help others.”
With Lucy becoming increasingly fatigued and unable to walk, she bought a lightweight electric wheelchair but it doesn’t “feel safe”.
She wants a £4,000 XSTO model to allow more independence and access, but couldn’t get one through NHS wheelchair services as she’s able to walk short distances.
But worse was to come when she started fundraising as Lucy was targeted by scammers impersonating a genuine mobility company.
Lucy said: “They sent an invoice with company registration numbers and everything, the specifications for the chair, it was incredibly convincing.
“I raised enough on my GoFundMe page to pay for the deposit when they sent the details over, but it was to an individual account. That didn’t feel right.
“I phoned the store they were impersonating, which the scammers told me not to do, and I quickly found out it was a scam.”
The genuine suppliers, Lifestyle & Mobility, investigated and offered a discounted model to Lucy, but her fight for greater freedom for herself and others is far from over.
She’s since submitted a petition to Parliament to get the eligibility rules changed to reflect the needs of people like herself, with her Hampshire MP also writing to the Minister for Health and Social Care in support.
She said: “I just I want to challenge the barriers faced by ambulatory wheelchair users more widely.
“It upsets me that so many people have to fight for a piece of equipment that means they can live more easily and have the ability to enjoy more experiences and their communities.”
To donate to Lucy’s wheelchair appeal visit www.gofundme.com/f/lucys-wheelchair-appeal
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