COVID-19 Pandemic in Northern California

VIDA has been continuing to navigate the COVID crisis responding to ongoing needs and realities.  VIDA’s early work in helping to distribute medical supplies to locally based healthcare providers that were experiencing shortages has now morphed into  providing assistance to Bay Area projects working with vulnerable communities.

Hospitals have a unique problem of managing massive inventories of protective supplies such as masks and gloves that are rapidly expiring and will no longer be able to be used in a hospital setting. These inventories were built up due to the uncertainties during the early crisis. Many of these items have expiration dates due to sterilization requirements.  Although these items are no longer considered sterile, and appropriate for medical purposes, they still can be used for protection from the virus for vulnerable individuals. VIDA can help bridge the gap between the excess inventories and those in need.  Many of those individuals are immigrants who due to a variety of reasons remain un-vaccinated and live and work in high risk environments.

One group that VIDA has been working closely with is CRECE (Central American Refugee Committee) located in Oakland. CRECE is a grassroots organization assists refugees from Central and South America with housing, employment, immigration and basic services such as food and clothing. Given their legal and economic status, many of their clients are at extremely high risk. VIDA has been providing CRECE with thousands of boxes of masks, gloves and sanitizer to distribute in the community over the past year. In addition VIDA has donated supplies that CRECE has transported to El Salvador to clinics providing care to impoverished individuals.

 VIDA’s work is made possible by our generous donors. We thank you and GlobalGiving for helping us carry-out our lifesaving work.

VIDAhas  played an unusual role over the past two years of the epidemic.  Historically, donations flowed from United States based hospitals through VIDA to impoverished hospitals overseas.  However, the COVID crisis exposed our own local vulnerability to an epidemic.  

VIDA started receiving requests for beds and other related equipment and supplies from the hospitals that have been so generous to our mission.   As a result, VIDA donated over 100 beds and truckloads of supplies and equipment to various hospitals throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.

Now that the crisis appears to be on the decline, hospitals are now donating back the equipment which in turn will be sent overseas to many programs that our still in crisis mode due to COVID.  This will entail thousands of dollars of local transportation costs incurred by VIDA. 

It is your generous donations that make this new response to the crisis possible.  VIDA looks forward to shipping this much needed equipment to our projects overseas.