Designers and welfare organizations are coming forward in this testing time to provide personal protective equipment (PPE) to doctors and healthcare providers at hospitals, and on Saturday, designer Asim Jofa presented the first consignment of full-body protective suits along with other material, designed and produced by him, to Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC).
“Today, we have handed around 100 full-body protective suits over to Dr Seemin Jamali for doctors and paramedics of the JPMC, who are treating the coronavirus patients. These suits are water-proof and can be reused by disinfecting them. But we would provide more suits to the JPMC so that doctors and paramedics would not have to wear them twice," Asim Jofa told The News after handing over PPE to the JPMC administration.
In addition to the full-body protective suit, which was designed by Asim Jofa and his team in consultation with Dr Seemin Jamali and a team of experts at the JPMC, Asim Jofa also presented facemasks, face shields and hand sanitisers to the JPMC, saying he was making this contribution to provide frontline workers who were fighting against the coronavirus pandemic in the country.
He said he had made his production facility operational for the preparation of PPE required by the doctors, and added that his would continue to provide the full-body suits and other protective equipment to the JPMC whenever they required.
“In addition to the PPE, we have prepared hand sanitisers with over 73 per cent of alcohol as per international guidelines and provided it to the JPMC administration. Our ultimate goal is to protect our healthcare providers so that they could continue to serve the patients till this pandemic of coronavirus is over," he added.
On the occasion, Asim Jofa urged women sitting at their homes to use his design and take any fabric that is water-resistant to stitch protective suits for the healthcare providers, saying healthcare workers in Thatta to Sukkur need this stuff which can easily be prepared at homes and provided to healthcare workers.
Felicitating Asim Jofa and his team on coming up with protective equipment of international standard, Dr Seemin Jamali said she was glad people like Asim Jofa were coming forward to help the suffering humanity and caring for the needs of doctors, who were on the frontline against coronavirus in Pakistan.
“Personal protective equipment is the armour of our doctors and healthcare providers against the coroanvirus epidemic and it is not available easily these days. I’m glad Asim Jofa came forward and used his expertise in the designing and stitching to design and produce an excellent body suit to protect frontline healthcare workers from the virus."
Dua Foundation
Dua Foundation, a welfare organisation working in Sindh, has so far donated thousands of PPE to public hospitals where doctors and frontline healthcare workers are forced to work with ordinary surgical masks and plastic sheets wrapped around their bodies.
“Yesterday, we provided hundreds of personal protective equipment to the Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation (SIUT) where coroanvirus patients are being treated these days. Our focus is to provide PPE to public sector hospitals, which are being ignored by the authorities," said Dr Fayyaz Alam, general secretary of the DUA Foudnation, while talking to The News on Saturday.
Dr Alam said they had donors spread all over the world, especially doctors who were concerned about their fellow doctors and paramedics in Pakistan and were donating generously so that personal protective equipment could be provided to them.
“So far, we have provided N95 masks, full-body suits, disposable gloves and other PPE to doctors at the JPMC, Civil Hospital Karachi, Alkhidmat Hospital at Gulshan-e-Hadeed, and most recently, at the SIUT," he said, adding that they were in connection with factories in Karachi where PPE was being produced and acquiring that for the healthcare providers in the province.
To a query, Dr Alam said they were also ready to provide PPE to a field hospital being set up by the Sindh government in collaboration with the Pakistan Army at the Expo Centre Karachi. He added that they were preferring to provide the precious stuff to those doctors and healthcare providers who were in the frontline against coronavirus and serving at the emergencies and isolation centres.