key: cord-352233-avov4yxv
authors: Liu, Antonio
title: Philanthropy and Humanity in the Face of a Pandemic – A letter to the editor on “World Health Organization declares global emergency: A review of the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19)” (Int J Surg 2020; 76:71-6)
date: 2020-05-12
journal: Int J Surg
DOI: 10.1016/j.ijsu.2020.05.012
sha: 
doc_id: 352233
cord_uid: avov4yxv

nan

1 Dear editor, I read with great interest the article by Sohrabi et al. on lessons we learnt from this outbreak crisis [1] . Since the very beginning of the COVID 19 pandemic, the health care industry has been forced to confront an invisible enemy -the shortage of personal protected equipment (PPE). The enormous pressure and struggles to secure sufficient and appropriate PPE for the front -line workers in order to provide safe and compassionate care to the COVID patients inevitably add to the tremendous difficulty we face in combating this aggressive and vicious disease, not only at home in the United States, but also resonating around the world.

With no clear indication or assurance of assistance coming from the government, many institutions and organizations have ramped up their philanthropy effort to secure proper equipment and protective gears for their staff. As the Medical Director for two Primary Stroke Centers at Downtown Los Angeles, I get to experience first-hand the psychological and physical impacts of the perceived shortage of PPE have on our front-line workers. My call of duties to help tackle this challenge strengthens every day when I witness my colleagues selflessly caring for their COVID patients with inadequate PPE.

Hospitals I worked at had already worked tirelessly to secure the necessary equipment and protective gears from their supply chains as this pandemic unfolds on our shores. However, most of these supplies are manufactured and imported from China and the whole world has turned to China competing for PPE. This competition is further complicated by the fact that the Chinese manufacturing plants have been halted for months to combat the disease.

In retrospect, when this pandemic first hit China, social media platform becomes a useful tool for us to connect with the rest of the world and stay informed about the current situation. In late January, we started taking part in several donation chat groups on Facebook and WeChat to solicit PPE to donate to our colleagues in China and other Asian countries, and those efforts turned out to be fruitful. Our participants include physicians, dentists, nurses, other health professionals, as well as entrepreneurs from private and public sectors all around the world. When COVID hits home not long after, we decided to swiftly reverse the direction of donation and the idea of "reverse engine, full throttle" was born and announced to our donation group.

When words spread rapidly among the group participants and beyond, responses to our call for PPE donation started pouring in. The first significant lead came from an Asian entrepreneur donor who is a friend of a researcher working in a well-known research institution on the east coast. The researcher is a member in our donation chatgroup. Donor pledged over 1,000,000 surgical face masks and equal amount of N-95 face masks to every hospital in the United States on a first-come, first serve basis. Quite frankly, it sounded too good to be true initially. Nonetheless, I decided to jump on the bandwagon and give it a shot. I promptly connected with the charitable foundation and administrations from our hospitals and they all expressed interests. After careful vetting and involvement of legal department from the hospitals, signed consents were sent to the donor. It took numerous rounds of communications and meticulous coordination between the donor, the organizer and the administrators from our hospitals before we got the news that the cargo plane was finally heading to the West Coast. After two weeks of anxiously waiting and more communications back and forth, the shipment finally arrived.

To proceed with caution, we took a random sample of the donations to our quality control department for close inspection and quality assurance before we were finally able to release these supplies to our PPE arsenal. I truly feel the moment we received the news that all the PPE are qualified to be used was one of the most memorable and accomplishing time in my professional career, to say the very least. I was absolutely thrilled that our efforts have come to fruition in the most critical time.

Other channels of donation also proved to be resilient and encouraging: A significant number of surgical masks, N-95 masks, face shields and surgical gowns were donated from retired physicians, dentists, HMOs, bowling and ice-skating organizations, and even friends and families of the chat group members. Local businesses in the LA metro areas with connections to businesses in the Pacific rim were able to facilitate various PPE shipments from government-approved suppliers in China and Southeast Asia, and donations continue to trickle in.

Another innovative approach was to enlist local garment shop and volunteers to start producing gowns from suitable material. One Boeing engineer from the chat group connected with us after she designed a prototype of the water-proof disposable gown that is like what we use in the hospital. After approval from the Infection Control department, we were able to start producing a small quantity of disposable gowns to ease the shortage. Feedback from frontline nurses and staff are very positive.

The donation process has been an amazing reflection of solidarity, humanity and philanthropy from people all around the world during this pandemic. To date, we are delighted to have collected more than 8,000 units of N-95 masks, 70,000 surgical masks, 1,500 face shields and 1,000 gowns. They are all donated to our hospitals according to their needs. In time of adversity and uncertainty, the spirit of giving and using innovative approaches to tackling challenges have again shone a bright light on this unforgettable journey. Acknowledgement: Author wish to thank Prissilla Xu, PharmD for assistance in the donation process and manuscript preparation.

Not Commissioned, internally reviewed

World Health Organization Declares Global Emergency: A Review of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19)

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