Graffiti leads South Shields chemist shop to come up with colourful rainbow tribute to the NHS

The end result is a huge rainbow display in tribute to the NHS, which has won Carter’s Chemist and Travel Clinic in Fowler Street, South Shields, heaps of praise as customers join them in thanking healthcare workers who are helping to treat patients during the coronavirus outbreak.

The artwork was painted by Steven Nesbit, who usually works as a tattoo artist, during the weekend after the pharmacy’s owner Hassan Malik was impressed by work done inside his brother Amaar’s My Car Cleaning business in Newcastle.

Mr Malik, who leads a team of 10 at the pharmacy, which has an NHS contract, said the business had been blown away by the end result, with more than 3,000 people liking their post about the display on the shop’s Facebook page.

It replaced a long white line of paint which had left the front of its plain shutter ruined, with the complete piece taking almost five hours to create.

Mr Malik said: “Last week, somebody went across the shutters with a white line right across the middle and we’d only repainted it last year.

“Rather than just repaint it again, we thought we’d do something different.

“We asked Steven to do an NHS rainbow and we wanted it to have a pharmacy theme, but then gave him full control to do what he wanted to do, because we know how creative he is.

”We’ve had a really positive response to it and the complete work is amazing and it brings a lot of colour to the street and shows our support for the NHS.”

Carter’s, which has been running for more than 70 years, has recruited taxi drivers to help it deliver medicines to people who are self-isolating or vulnerable, and has handed out hand sanitiser to customers when shelves of other stores were cleared by panic buyers.

It has also gifted 50 care packages to those in need, donated face masks to medics and passed on sanitiser, hand cream and chocolates on to South Tyneside District Hospital at Easter.

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