Sussex business sends 4,500 medical masks to India to battle Covid crisis

The FFP3 face masks were sent to Mumbai, where they were immediately distributed amongst aid workers and frontline teams, including police and doctors on the Covid frontline, on their arrival over the weekend.

The continued harrowing news coming out of India, where the country passed the 300,000 mark in Covid deaths this week, really brought to home to a number of Sussex businesses that unless the fight against Covid is stopped globally it will continue to have an impact on us all, both on a human and economical level.

Sussex based co-working and flexible office operator, Freedom Works Ltd had started to raise funds for an on-the-ground charity, OSCAR Foundation, to help support their efforts at supporting some of the most disadvantaged communities in Mumbai.

Managing director of Freedom Works, Jon Trigg, said: “Having watched the news of burning pyres and queues for oxygen a couple of weeks ago, we decided to raise some funds to help support the fight against Covid in India, via members in our space.

“Our philosophy is all about the community and whilst those suffering in

"India don’t live in our direct community, they are part of our global community, which is why we wanted to help."

Members of Freedom Works managed to raise nearly £4,000 for the OSCAR Foundation, who used that money to feed hundreds of families, which in turn meant having food they did not need to go to work, and could self isolate and stopping the spread of the virus.

During the communication with the charity on the ground in India, it became apparent that the PPE being used was makeshift and not the most effective, especially against the highly contagious ‘Indian Variant’.

Upon realising this the team from Freedom Works, managed to coordinate donations from within the community of unused FFP3 (triple filtered) face masks to send to front line workers in Mumbai.

Trigg added: "As the success of the vaccine roll out starts to take effect over here, we realised we had lots of unused PPE, especially medically grade face masks which we felt would be better suited supporting our friends in India."

Ashok Rathod, founder and CEO of OSCAR Foundation said: “We’ve been using doubled up cloth masks, so having these FFP3 masks make such a difference in ensuring we are protecting our frontline teams who are here, helping our communities."

Freedom Works have sent the message out to other local businesses who have unused or surplus PPE to send out more.

If businesses would like to donate unused or surplus PPE or masks Freedom Works are keen to hear from them.

Trigg added: “Although this is not in our back yard, it is on us as a global community to help one another."