News

Six children from across the Western Isles were recently presented with vouchers for winning the NHS Western Isles ’design your own mask’ competition.

The competition was open to children aged between 5 and 11 who attended for the COVID vaccine.

We received around 50 colourful and artistic entries from children across the Western Isles, and Uilly Macleod from Peat and Diesel kindly presented the prizes to some of the winners.

Megan Maclean, age 7 from Lewis, and Jenna Macleod, age 9 from Lewis, were awarded joint first place for their masks. Megan’s colourful unicorn mask caught our eye and we thought Jenna’s artistic mask was a perfect depiction of her pet cow, Elsa, who photobombed her picture!

The runner-up prizes went to Fraser Morrison, age 6 from Harris, for his colourful dinosaur mask; Mia Engebretson, age 9 from Lewis, for her very artistic and detailed elephant; James MacInnes, age 10 from Eriskay, for his hypnotic snake; and Evie Rae, age 10 from Balivanich, for her bright and beautiful butterfly.

Well done and thank you to all the children who participated, and to the adults for submitting the wonderful photographs, which brightened up our social media pages and helped to raise awareness of the COVID vaccine. Thanks also to Uilly from Peat and Diesel for taking the time to present the prizes to the children who could attend.

We would also like to thank the Starlight Foundation for their kind donation of games consoles, which were provided for children to play with while they were waiting in the vaccination centre; and also the Scottish Government for the materials they provided for the children’s clinics.