Mumbai: A week after the staff of Bandra's KB Bhabha Hospital staged a protest demanding adequate Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) from the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) health department, a city-based civic volunteer group came to their rescue and donated 250 face shields to help them combat the CoVID-19 outbreak.
As many as 150 nurses and paramedics of the BMC-run hospital had demanded to be quarantined after a 45-year-old woman passed away and had tested positive for the virus. The staff claimed that they didn’t have adequate protective gear required to do their job amidst the pandemic.
Members of the Bandra-based civic volunteers group Mumbai North Central District Forum (MNCDF), which has been operating its own flying squad to supply medical amenities and emergency products to senior citizens and stranded labourers in the city, expressed their concern on the matter.
They initiated an online donation drive on their social media platform and urged people to donate to the cause. Using these funds, medical equipment was supplied to the hospital staff. "We started an online donation drive and received a humongous response within three minutes after opening the link of the payment getaways.
We received funds to buy 200 pieces of shields, which is double the number that we have expected," said Advocate Trivankumar Karnani, founder and spokesperson MNCDF. Subsequently, MNCDF reached out to the manufacturer of face shields and bought 200 masks.
Fifty more masks were donated by the manufacturer as a goodwill measure. "We had the amount to buy 200 masks. The manufacturer donated 50 extra masks as a goodwill gesture to applaud the brave medics who are presently working at the forefront battling the virus.
Thus, we handed over all the 250 masks to the hospital administration on Monday," stated Karnani. On Tuesday, the senior medical officer of Bhabha Hospital wrote to MNCDF expressing his gratitude. Paramedic staffers of the hospital also confirmed the usage of the face masks.
"We didn’t have basic protective gears and PPEs required to do our job. However, now that we have received face masks, we can continue to do our job in a dedicated manner," said a paramedic staffer of the hospital.
