Team effort secures goggles for front-line doctors and nurses

Zhu Jiacong has worked without a break since late January, but due to her team's efforts, doctors and nurses fighting the novel coronavirus pneumonia outbreak in Wuhan, Hubei province, and other areas of the country have been equipped with protective goggles.

Others who have received donations from the team include grassroots government officials, community workers and volunteers.

Zhu is secretary-general of the Essilor Vision Foundation, the charity arm of the Essilor Group, a French ophthalmic optics giant, which launched a special fund to buy 100,000 pairs of goggles for medical and civil use during the outbreak. The group has also donated a total of 1.5 million yuan ($211,350) for epidemic prevention and protection.

On Jan 23, when the lockdown was imposed in Wuhan, then the outbreak's epicenter, Zhu's team began to discuss how it could help, beyond donating money.

"We saw that doctors had confirmed that the virus could be transmitted through the eyes. However, at the time, many hospitals didn't have enough goggles," she said.

Zhu and her colleagues decided to obtain goggles through every channel they could find, and send them directly to the front-line workers.

She said she wrote an email to the Essilor Group chairman and the CEO, and they replied immediately that help would be offered to China.

Initially, the team searched for resources within the group, finding that two subsidiary companies, one in China and the other in the United States, had goggles for civil use. The team immediately asked for all their stock.

The first 500 pairs of goggles were delivered to workers manning highway toll booths in Shanghai early last month, when large numbers of people were returning to the city after Spring Festival.

The subsidiary in the US was quick to help, providing the contact information of a supplier, along with prices, Zhu said.

"The US company also told the supplier that the goggles would be used for 'disaster relief' work and asked it to provide them at the lowest price."

The foundation bought 50,000 pairs from the supplier and distributed them within a week to workers and volunteers in residential neighborhoods and at highway toll booths in Shanghai.

Zhu's team also searched for factories manufacturing goggles for medical use. One of the group's subsidiaries in Fujian province located such a plant and asked it to make every effort to provide supplies.

The team bought 50,000 goggles from the factory and sent them to 150 hospitals in Hubei and Wenzhou, a city in Zhejiang province, which has also been severely affected by the outbreak. Supplies also went to Shanghai and Guangdong province, which have sent large numbers of medical workers to Wuhan.

More than half the supplies were sent to hospitals in Hubei, including those in Wuhan, Jingzhou, Ezhou and Xiaogan as well as Suixian, a county in Suizhou, Zhu said.

She added that the team searched for hospitals in need of goggles through online posts, local volunteers and journalists.

"We discovered that small places such as Suixian had found it difficult to attract media attention and resources, but their infection rate was high compared to the total population," she said.

Zhu tracked each batch of donations sent to the hospitals. "Transportation in Wuhan was often disrupted after the lockdown was imposed, especially on snowy days. A local volunteer group transporting supplies in the city took the initiative to help with our donations," she said.

Doctors and nurses at Aier Eye Hospital in Xiaogan thanked Zhu and her team in particular, as they did not have medical goggles before the donations arrived and only had those for civil use, which failed to provide proper protection.

The hospital is being used for medical quarantine and to observe suspected cases.