In March, NHS England requested former Doctors, Nurses and other Health Care Practitioners to return to practice stating "Your NHS needs you".  Over 20,000 heeded this call and commenced frontline working - many of these are vulnerable, due to age, to the current Covid-19 pandemic. 

Despite only being a few weeks into this pandemic, we are now starting to see the unfortunate deaths of these heroic workers due to Covid-19.  Already we have seen the death of a former Medical Director, aged 68 and only four years into his retirement from the NHS, after volunteering at one of the worst hit hospitals in the country. 

The NHS pension scheme will not pay the survivor partners and widows of these heroic healthcare workers the pension their partners would have received - only paying the survivor pension amount, dramatically reducing household income when these heroic people could otherwise have been protected by this pandemic, had they chosen to remain safely at home, instead of bravely stepping forward to help save the lives of many, rather than their own. 

This is going to have a dire impact on these families financially, let alone having to deal with the emotional loss. We should be supporting the families of those who tragically lose loved ones who have died prematurely, through answering this call for help during this unprecedented event.