The Healthcare Workers’ Foundation (HWF), the charity started by and for healthcare workers in the midst of the pandemic, has partnered with global environmental organisation Parley for the Oceans (Parley), for the second time to support healthcare workers in the Maldives.
The two have joined forces again to donate PPE – including recycled visors, hospital gowns, masks and goggles – to hospitals based in the Maldives, providing enough equipment to support all of the hospitals and covid facilities across the entire country.
To coincide with this initiative, the charity has also donated 23,500 units of PPE – some of which are made from recycled ocean plastic – to hospitals in Sierra Leone in addition to a further 40,718 visors and goggles to the Africa Healing Foundation.
The Sierra Leone initiative is in collaboration with Dr Samuel Sessay, Project Coordinator in Sierra Leone who has partnered with HWF to provide urgent support to healthcare workers in the West African nation. Sierra Leone will receive thousands of units of PPE donated by HWF that will make a genuine difference to the day-to-day lives of healthcare workers, ensuring they can continue to fulfil their roles with confidence and protection.
Healthcare workers across both regions have been under enormous pressure since the pandemic hit their shores in March 2020. In the Maldives, many frontline staff have not only been overstretched since tackling covid-19 on the frontlines, but due to the remote location of the island nation they’ve also had to manage moving covid patients to assigned covid facilities. Sierra Leone, a nation significantly impacted by the Ebola epidemic as recently as 2017, has seen many healthcare workers working in overstretched hospitals for years, with the pandemic intensifying the impact on the already-fragile healthcare system.
Ibrahim Saleem, Chief Executive Officer, Indira Gandhi Memorial Hospital Maldives commented: ”We are extremely grateful for the support that HWF and Parley have provided to the Maldives. Not only are they making a huge impact to the lives of our frontline staff, but they are helping our communities stay safe while at our hospitals and at covid facilities. Equally, the fact that some of the materials have been recycled from recovered ocean plastic also means we’re able to keep our healthcare workers safe with materials that don’t harm the planet. The donation of this PPE equipment has come at a time so crucial to our frontline staff, who are exhausted having fought the pandemic for nearly two years now. We have so much peace of mind knowing that we have a fresh stockpile of PPE inventory to ensure they are protected while supporting our communities in the covid facilities. We are also distributing this to the regional hospitals and island covid facilities. This has come in time and was an immense help in fighting the pandemic”
Samuel Sessay, Molecular Scientist, commented on the Sierra Leone donation: “I am extremely grateful to HWF for their support by donating much-needed PPE to Sierra Leone and for funding the shipment. The donation proves yet again how committed HWF is to supporting healthcare workers, and I’m so proud to be working with them to ensure frontline staff in Sierra Leone can be protected from the virus while helping their communities.”
Commenting on the two global initiatives, Julie Child, CEO of HWF, said: ““We are delighted to be partnering with Parley for the second time for an initiative so important to the healthcare workers of the Maldives, as well as Dr Samuel Sessay for our Sierra Leone project. While we are committed to supporting frontline staff in the UK, it’s so important that when we have an opportunity to do so, we reach out to overseas organisations and help their healthcare workers who face an array of unique challenges in addition to dealing with the impact of Covid-19.”
