With the current flooding situation, we’re thinking of the Forbes community who are doing it tough right now. A special shout out to our resilient pathology staff at Forbes who are supporting their local communities and ensuring precious specimens reach our labs for testing.

Senior Super­vis­ing Sci­en­tist at NSW Health Pathology’s Forbes Lab Robyn Seber­ry said while Forbes Health Ser­vice (includ­ing the pathol­o­gy lab) is high on a hill, it’s more like an island with so much sur­round­ing water.

“It’s been chal­leng­ing for patients and our couri­ers to access the health ser­vice, and our thoughts are with every­one who have been affect­ed,” Robyn said.

“We’re send­ing a huge heart­felt thank you to our couri­ers who’ve been dri­ving in very chal­leng­ing cir­cum­stances over the past month.

“They’ve tak­en so many detours and dis­cov­ered many back roads and safe pas­sages to get around the flood­ed water­ways. They’re an awe­some crew and we are lucky to have them as part of our service.”

As well as our own couri­ers like Rus­sell Platt (pic­tured), we also had to call on help from local emer­gency services.

Thank you to the Rur­al Fire Ser­vice and SES vol­un­teers who came to our aid to fer­ry pre­cious spec­i­mens from out­ly­ing hos­pi­tals across the water to our lab in Forbes, and also ensured we got our send away spec­i­mens out to oth­er labs.

We’re so grate­ful to these teams for their sup­port, which has allowed us to con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing essen­tial pathol­o­gy ser­vices to our communities.

Robyn said Forbes is an incred­i­ble and resilient com­mu­ni­ty who are ral­ly­ing in very dif­fi­cult times.

“It’s been inspir­ing to be part of such a car­ing and resilient team who are look­ing out for each oth­er. The Forbes staff are all cur­rent­ly safe but we have fam­i­ly and friends that are impact­ed by this flood­ing and our thoughts are with our com­mu­ni­ty as they begin the dif­fi­cult task of clean­ing up,” Robyn said.

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