Tanoti’s PPE production initiative in progress
KUCHING: Local social enterprise Tanoti has launched a humanitarian relief initiative to provide protective personal equipment (PPE) to healthcare frontliners in Sabah and is appealing for donations to the cause.
“The state of Sabah today is reeling from a fresh outbreak of Covid-19 cases.
“As at Oct 16, more than 6,000 Sabahans tested positive, with more than 20,000 under quarantine as persons-under-investigation.
“The use of PPE during such times would be very rampant with both clinical and field frontliners requiring them at high velocity,” it said in a statement.
Compilation of photos shows PPE gears being used by fieldwork frontliners in Tawau.
According to Tanoti co-founder Jacqueline Fong, the social enterprise intends to distribute PPE items specifically isolation gowns, hood covers, boot covers and shoe covers to the frontline units of the Health Ministry in the east coast of Sabah.
“In addition, we intend to produce surgical gowns for use in operation theatres at hospitals in Sabah. We believe that with the air logistics being cut, operating theatre supplies would run out (of these supplies) very quickly,” she said.
The PPE garments would be sewn on a crowd-sourced basis, in which Tanoti would coordinate the exercise and deploy internal resources for sorting, folding and packing.
“On an immediate basis, we are producing PPE for delivery to Tawau District Health Office, to be sent out on Monday (Oct 19) by road,” said Fong.
The delivery to Tawau would consist of 1,000 pieces of isolation gowns, 1,000 pieces of hood covers, 500 pairs of boot covers and 500 pairs of shoe covers.
After that, critical PPE items would be distributed to Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Kota Kinabalu, Sandakan Hospital, Sandakan District Health Office, and other frontline units as and when the requests are received.
Fong said she was pleased that many Kuching-based sewists had agreed to participate at just a moment’s notice.
“I believe that many people are genuinely interested in contributing towards fighting Covid-19, and Tanoti is providing the avenue for us in Sarawak to help our neighbour state,” she said.
Donations can be channelled via Tanoti Sdn Bhd’s Maybank account 5610-3310-5449. Donors are to make reference to ‘PPE for Sabah’ in their remittances.
As Tanoti is an accredited social enterprise, all donations are eligible for tax deductions under Section 44(11C) of Income Tax Act 1967.