Dear friends:

     Right now, the battle against the novel coronavirus in the United States has gradually reached its peak. Many doctors fighting on the front line face the risk of serious infection every day while striving to rescue patients. In particular, anesthesiologists, ICU physicians and ER physicians are the most vulnerable ones. They go to work every day and do not know whether they would be the next victims of such dangerous infection. Currently, there is a serious lack of protective equipment; especially in some private hospitals, in small and medium-sized hospitals, there is a lack of basic protection measures for medical workers. Not only is there a shortage of masks, but there are also almost no surgical gowns or protective clothing for them to wear, which is the equivalent of running into a battle shirtless, without firearms! They need help and protection! The urgent voices for help from the front-line medical workers come again and again, and bad news comes daily. Today, we lost our fifth doctor. This tragedy makes us heart-broken and sleepless at night.

     Faced with this critical situation, MVI (Medical Volunteers International) launched a donation project for protective gowns a week ago, calling on many Chinese medical groups and Chinese communities to raise funds to purchase and donate protective gowns to protect our frontline physicians. As of April the 3rd, MVI has ordered a total of 4341 sets of protective gowns. The first batch of 341 pieces has been sent to two hospitals in New York and New Jersey. Now the second batch of 2750 sets is being sent to hospitals in urgent need. The third batch of 600 sets will be sent out to two hospitals in New York city, directly from China. These protective gowns worth nearly $100,000 have been donated by many people. Some of the funds has been paid in advance by the sponsoring doctors, but we are still in the process of meeting our donation goal.

     Please check on the status of our successful fund raising and donation summaries in the past week. Thank you very much for the support from many Chinese doctors and the Chinese communities.

 COVID -19 Outbreak – US Support

     Our next fund raising goal is to raise $120,000 to buy 2800 pieces of protective gowns and more! We have ordered it last night. We used our personal money ($45000) to cover part of cost.

     America is the home of the brave, and everyone has been greatly blessed by her. Now is the time for us to contribute back to this wonderful country. To protect a doctor is to protect ourselves. We encourage everyone to act quickly, donate actively, and work together to protect our anesthesiologists, ICU doctors, emergency doctors, and other doctors fighting on the front line.

Donation link: Donate for COVID-19 Outbreak US

Sincerely,

Steven Shu, MD, Liguang Huang, MD