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The international non-profit organization Direct Relief, based in Santa Barbara, provides humanitarian support free-of-charge to people around the world. Over the past year, the Central Coast has also benefited from their support.
After disasters like hurricanes, earthquakes, wildfires, and yes, pandemics, Direct Relief responds with medicine and supplies.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the organization has provided aid in the U.S. and other countries.
“We’re fortunate in that we do stockpile PPE for events like this,” said Thomas Tighe, CEO of Direct Relief.
Tighe said the coronavirus presented a new challenge because it hit simultaneously around the world.
“We scrambled to try to scale as fast and as much as we could but basically building on the same backbone that Direct Relief has created over 73 years of functionally performing a distribution function,” Tighe said.
Operational Update: More than 1 Million Defined Daily Doses of Medication Shipped This Week
An update on the last seven days of Direct Relief s operational activity.
A medical provider at Alta Med, a health center with 35 sites in Los Angeles and Orange Counties, provides care to a patient in Dec. 2020. The health center sees more than 300,000 patients each year, and Direct Relief has shipped protective gear and requested medical essentials to the provider throughout the pandemic. (Photo courtesy of Alta Med)
347 shipments of requested medical aid to
43 U.S. states and territories and 13 countries worldwide.
The shipments contained more than
1.3 million defined daily doses of medication, including insulin, antibiotics, and other essential medications, as well as medical essentials for Covid-19 response, including personal protective equipment, or PPE, and powered air purifying respirators, or PAPRs.