HELPING THE HELPERS
Chinese-American community donates thousands of PPE supplies to Vidant, ECU Physicians
Member of the fundraising committee, Leo Chen, right, delivers donations to Ricky Vandiford, Vidant’s logistics manager who coordinates supply chain management.
Update 5/21/20: Communities throughout North Carolina continue to support health care providers in Greenville through generous donations of personal protective equipment. The Chinese-American community in Greenville recently donated 10,000 additional face masks to Vidant Health. The Buddhist Tzu CHI Foundation, based in Raleigh, also donated 5,000 face masks, 240 N95s and 200 face shields to ECU Physicians on May 14.
A special set of skills, the right connections and a desire to help motivated Greenville’s Chinese-American community to raise funds, source, purchase and donate thousands of dollars’ worth of personal protective equipment (PPE) to area health care providers as COVID-19 spread to eastern North Carolina.
Together with fundraising committee co-chair Luyao Yan, other ECU faculty and other members of the area’s Chinese community, Dr. Xiaoming Zeng, professor and chair of ECU College of Allied Health Sciences’ Department of Health Services and Information Management, led fundraising efforts through the Greenville Chinese School to raise $15,000 toward personal protective equipment for Greenville’s health care workers. The group also sourced the materials through their connections in China, vetted the suppliers and certification of the supplies and had them shipped to Greenville.
The fundraiser’s 133 unique donations were enough to provide 10,000 surgical masks, 500 N95 masks, 300 protective suits and 1,550 face shields to Vidant Medical Center and ECU Physicians.
“Most of us were immigrants here,” Zeng said. “We all have family and friends still in China. When the whole thing started in China, we followed the news and witnessed those horrifying scenes where there were a lack of PPE and people were dying.”
ECU faculty Dr. Haiyong Liu from the Department of Economics, Dr. Qiang Wu from the Department of Statistics, Dr. Yang Liu from the Department of Engineering and Telly Ipock from Information Technology and Computing Services are among the group’s members who contributed to the effort to bring the donations to Greenville.
As the novel coronavirus spread throughout the world, the threat began to diminish in the pandemic’s epicenter. Around the United States, demand for PPE supplies skyrocketed. It was about that time, Zeng said, that his group realized that the health care providers in Greenville would need as much support as they could get, and they were in a position to help.
Chen, right, and Vandiford take a photo with the donations.
While soliciting donations from family and friends both here in the U.S. and back in China, group member Yingqin Zhao of New Bern sourced and vetted information about purchasing certified PPE supplies with their contacts in China while others worked on the logistics. Leo Chen, a member of the fundraising committee and owner of Shogun restaurant in Greenville, assisted with the transportation of supplies from China – something he is already well-versed in as a result of his business’ demands.
“We wanted to send a positive message to the community, but I think the community needs to realize the hospital needs a lot more help from us,” Zeng said. “It’s lucky for Greenville to have a hospital like Vidant as a health care organization, like ECU Physicians. But we need to be here for them. They’re here for us and we need to be here for them as well.”
The donations were welcomed by both Vidant and ECU Physicians in early April.
“ECU Physicians, like many other institutions across the country, have been struggling to obtain adequate supplies of PPE, such as face masks, for everyday use,” said Martha Dartt, chief nursing executive for ECU Physicians, who is focused on PPE. “These donations significantly shored up our inventory to comfortably provide PPE to all of our clinical staff for the next few months allowing time for our normal supply chain to catch up. Without these donations, we may have been forced to implement the use of reusing our recycled stock. These donations have ensured a consistent safe workplace environment for both our patients and staff.”
For those who worked to provide the donations, it was important to step in and help the place they now call home.
“This is a Chinese-American community,” Zeng said. “Many of us come from China, so that’s where we were born, that’s our origin, but all of us live here now. This is our home, and we wanted to do something to support our home. I think supporting our health care workers is one thing we could do.”