At the height of the Ebola outbreak crisis in September 2014, World Vision contacted long-time partner McKesson about the tremendous need for gloves and protective equipment in West Africa.
The McKesson Corporation, the largest healthcare services company in the United States, responded by donating 200 pallets of medical relief supplies including 4 million pairs of latex gloves. The supply was enough to meet the entire country of Sierra Leone’s needs for the next five months.
McKesson donated enough materials to meet the needs of medical workers throughout Sierra Leone for five months.
The massive shipment of medical relief supplies donated by the McKesson Corporation will help health workers to protect themselves and others from the spread of the Ebola virus.
Supplies donated by McKesson included 4 million pairs of latex gloves, 8,000 gallons of disinfectant, and personal protective equipment (PPE) kits. Each PPE kit includes gloves (surgical and examination), aprons, goggles or face shields, masks (high-filtration, surgical, and exam), caps and covers (beard covers, leg covers, and shoe covers), medical frocks, trousers, and scrubs.
With more than 21,000 cases and more than 8,400 deaths, the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa is the “largest, most severe and most complex” ever, the World Health Organization says. Sierra Leone is the worst affected country, seeing nearly half of all cases.
The World Health Organization has reported over 800 cases of infection among health care workers in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea, with more than 450 of those cases resulting in death.
According to the Wall Street Journal, “Much of this toll could have been avoided or at least mitigated, hospital workers on the front lines say, if they had been provided with medical basics, starting with one of the simplest: disposable rubber gloves.”
The massive shipment of medical relief supplies donated by the McKesson Corporation will help protect health workers from infection.
“We donated 4 million pair of gloves. We donated all the hazmat suits, the goggles — all the things that you need,” said Toby Capps, a McKesson account manager who helped create the Caregiver Kit partnership.
McKesson and World Vision have partnered together for the past several years to save lives and warehouse space via excess inventory donations. Life-saving items that would end up in a landfill instead end up in the hands of doctors and nurses who desperately need them.