My parents wanted me to have the best Christian education their modest means could afford. And, for them, UST was it. I don’t know if I turned out to be the kind of person they had envisioned me to become. But judging by the company I keep, I think they made the right decision. Instead of standing idly by, as the pandemic continues to claim lives, my friends from UST HS Batch ’81 have shown me yet again what Christianity in action is all about, as we all came to the aide of the country’s beleaguered healthcare front liners.
By ALEX Y. VERGARA
So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. — James 2:17
When I started a Facebook chat group a little over a year ago consisting of a core group of friends from the University of Santo Tomas High School, I never imagined my creation, which has since ballooned from less than 12 members to 132 and counting, to evolve to what it has become today. All because of a “novel” and unseen plague threatening to wipe out civilization as we know it.
For starters, the chat group or CG, which was set up for the sole purpose of praying for one of our critically ill batch mates named Orlie Cruz, now goes by a different name. From Orlie’s Prayer Warriors, we have agreed to rename it sometime later to USTHS 81 Prayer Warriors—1981 being the year we all graduated from UST High School to pursue different paths and callings—in the spirit of inclusivity as well as to reflect our ever-widening concerns.
By then, Orlie, God rest his soul, had already passed on, and the chat group, as expected, eventually became not only a venue for prayer requests from sick members (whose number continues to grow as we, well, age) or for those who had died, but also a venue for making announcements, catching up with one another, greeting birthday celebrants, even forwarding memes and jokes as well as exchanging reminiscences and old photos.
It short, it became a typical CG composed of good friends and acquaintances whose primary bond was spending some of the best years of their youth together learning about and preparing for life. Depending on who you talk to, the medium, like everything in this world, was starting to lose its novelty or, worse, becoming irrelevant and even perhaps a nuisance for the few who’ve chosen to leave it.
Unwelcome development
Well, thanks to an unwelcome development, that all started to change by late February, as our collective fear and anxiety level began to rise with every bad news related to the novel coronavirus and the highly contagious and deadly disease it brings, which we’ve all come to call by now as COVID-19.
Yes, it took a pandemic and the not-so-remote possibility that we, including our loved ones, could get infected, suffer greatly and even die to change the trajectory of our CG. Wittingly or not, for several weeks, we were starting to scare ourselves with every grim news story, real or otherwise, and memes we shared and commented on—from proper hand washing and the necessity of wearing face masks to the increasing number of COVID-19 cases and casualties that were starting to flood the country’s hospitals and crematoriums with each passing day.
Before we started dying one by one not by COVID-19, but by our own unfettered imagination running amuck, several members took on leadership roles and started to take action.
Indeed, whether it was 1918, the year the Spanish flu pandemic started wreaking havoc by eventually killing millions all over the world, or 2020, some things never change. Once again, it is in the service of others that you not only find personal fulfillment, but also much-needed relief from whatever demons that are haunting you, as you busy yourself by devoting your time and energy to those who need them most.
Led by Jeanette “Jean” Perez, and ably supported by Dr. Mylene Cipriano, Aileen “Tek” Rea-Garcia and designer Noel Crisostomo, the batch took the bull by the horns by agreeing to raise funds out of their own pockets to buy face masks, face shields, isopropyl alcohol and, most importantly, life-saving personal protective equipment (PPE) suits to give away to doctors and other frontline healthcare workers manning some of Metro Manila’s hospitals.
Tie a red ribbon
To hear it from Jean, it all started with an unlikely catalyst: the government’s call to tie a red ribbon in front of our respective houses in support of the country’s healthcare front liners. We were still days away then before the Luzon-wide enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) was to take effect, but the rising infection rate was starting to take its toll on ordinary Filipinos and the healthcare providers tasked to help heal them.
“I have the ribbon in the house, but I just felt stupid doing it because the effort was lacking,” says Jean, a Marian and Divine Mercy devotee. “Our front liners will never even know what we’re doing. I felt it was even self-serving. If I put the red ribbon out there, it talks about me. Not about them.”
In a move she describes as suntok sa buwan (impossible), she suddenly asked for pledges from CG members in the hope of generating enough funds to buy, among others, PPE suits for doctors. Back then, no one amongst us even knew where to source for PPEs, but she took a chance and made the call.
The initial silence, as the cliché goes, was deafening. But it was a gamble Jean was willing to take. Although, “to be honest,” she shares with me much later, “I’d be a little frustrated if no one answered.”
For one, she continues, there are doctors among the Prayer Warriors. Not only that, some members have sons and daughters who are out there in the trenches as doctors and nurses themselves. It would have been a shame if no one lifted a finger.
It didn’t take long though, for certain members to message Jean one by one, telling her that they didn’t have much money and if their planned donation amounting to anywhere from P1,000 to P1,500 would be enough. By then, Jean already had an idea how much one set of PPE costs: somewhere around P450.
“I assured them that if one PPE is worth P450, how could they say that their modest contributions wouldn’t amount to anything? One PPE means one life saved,” she says.
Within a day or so, the ball started rolling when somebody from the group donated P20,000. Even though Jean and her collaborators didn’t disclose the considerable donation yet, much less the person who made it, the amount acted like a magnet, attracting more donations in varying amounts from Prayer Warriors based here and abroad. By March 28, or two days after Jean initially made the appeal, our CG was able to initially accumulate P91,000 from various members.
“It took awhile for my call to sink in, which was quite understandable. People need time to process it. And such appeals are based on trust,” says Jean.
One of the first items the group bought and later distributed to various hospitals and clinics were 10 boxes of face masks and several gallons of alcohol.
Next hurdle
Now that we have enough funds, which continues to increase even to this day (a grand total, so far, of P258,600), the next hurdle our group had to overcome was where to source for the right PPEs while getting our money’s worth. Not the easiest thing to do these days, really, given that there’s a global contagion rampaging out there, when both quality materials and reliable suppliers are hard to come by.
Enter Noel, one of the fashion designers in the group. Had this happened outside of a pandemic, he would have easily gone to work with his team of sewers to do the PPEs themselves. But since most of them are either furloughed or have gone to the provinces, Noel did the next best thing. He found a manufacturer of PPEs in Antipolo offering not only the best price, but also the best materials our money could buy.
On the side, Noel, in front of his trusty sewing machine, has also been quietly making face masks made of cloth, which the group also donates to hospital personnel not necessarily in the frontline (front liners, especially those working in the ER and ICU, ideally require no less than N95 masks, which the group is also trying to source and later donate).
“Dupont, one of the leading manufacturers of PPEs in the world, uses a material called tyvek,” says Tek, one of the group’s resident researchers and “analysts.” “Although Noel’s supplier doesn’t use tyvek, he uses a material that’s closest to tyvek—60 GSM (gram per square meter) compared to tyvek’s 75 GSM.”
Just the right PPE
Before plunking down money, Jean also consulted the batch’s resident doctors on the basics of PPEs—every part of the body, she learned, should be covered, including the often neglected neck area.
She was also reminded by doctors in our group that not all hospitals in the country are fully air-conditioned. So, PPEs made of the thickest material may offer maximum protection, but they might end up weighing down their wearers in the course of the day because of the heat. In short, there should be a balance between offering ample protection and practicality.
With enough money in hand, the group initially ordered 150 PPE sets, the first 50 of which arrived two weeks later. The remaining sets arrived a week or so after that.
While waiting for the PPEs to arrive, the group, primarily through the efforts of Mylene and the other doctors in the batch, started either contacting or developing sources from among the various hospitals we intend to donate to. Like investigative reporters, they also asked around what groups in these hospitals were in dire need of PPEs. Certain members also started mobilizing their sons and daughters working, as I mentioned earlier, in the frontline.
Sure, we could have just donated to any healthcare facility out there by simply packing the PPEs and leaving them with the hospital’s administration. But we didn’t want to go that route for several reasons.
We don’t know if there’s truth to the copy-pasted message going around that certain hospitals still charge their COVID-19 patients for donated PPEs their doctors and nurses use. (They shouldn’t!) But it’s a legitimate concern. Although, as Tek puts it, that wasn’t our concern when we chose to be more selective in the distribution process.
“As they should, front liners in the ICU and ER get the lion’s share of PPEs, whether donated or supplied to them by their hospitals,” she explains. “But those working in other departments like pediatrics, toxicology and pathology, among others, we learned, are hardly getting any because of the huge volume of demand for PPEs. These are some of the groups we wanted to target from the start.”
Given the viral load found in most hospitals these days, every healthcare worker spending time there deserves some form of protection. And given that they’re readily exposed to the virus, adds Tek, many of them could already be infected but are still asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic. Just imagine if, say, a doctor or nurse without PPE goes about her work in the pediatrics department. She might end up unwittingly infecting countless babies and children.
“It’s important to protect and lend our support to every healthcare worker these days, even those in the second and third line of defense, because we don’t have any idea how long we could contain this pandemic,” Tek reasons.
Beneficiary hospitals
To date, our group has distributed face masks and PPE sets, often as many as 25 PPEs each, to such hospitals as UST Hospital, East Avenue Medical Center, National Kidney Institute, De los Santos Medical Center, Las Piñas Doctors’ Hospital, National Children’s Hospital, Alfonso Specialist Hospital and General Miguel Malvar Hospital.
On top of that, the Prayer Warriors each gave these beneficiary hospitals one box of face shields containing of 125 sets and three boxes of face masks containing 200 pieces.
To minimize the risk of any member getting infected and given that it’s quite difficult to move around these days even if you have your own car due to the ECQ, Jean and her collaborators deemed it wise and necessary to tap the services of delivery companies such as Grab and Lalamove to transport these donations.
A number of adult children of certain batch mates working in hospitals, Jean and company also learned later on, have been unable to go home since COVID-19 cases in the country began to go through the roof.
“You could just imagine the look of joy and relief on their faces once the deliveries arrive,” says Jean. “I even heard from a batch mate that her daughter, a doctor assigned to the pathology department, was in tears when she received our PPE donation for her and her team. I guess such a reaction comes from the feeling that, amidst this crisis, there are still people out there who support them. That they’re not alone in this fight.”
Miracle of the loaves and fishes
And like the Lord’s miracle of the loaves and fishes, the UST HS 81 Prayer Warriors’ fund, including donations from batch mates who aren’t part of the CG, no matter how small it has become, never seems to dry up. At one point, says Jean, the fund, after they made a series of purchases, dipped to as low as P50,000. As of this writing, the group, thanks to a fresh infusion of donations, still has P96,000 left.
But since Jean is expecting additional pledges from batch mates amounting to P25,000 in the coming days, the fund is expected to increase to P121,000. Again, if we are to peg each PPE at P450, that sum of money is equivalent to no less than 268 PPE sets or, in Jean’s book, at least, 268 lives saved.
Yes, that’s 268 lives that could further save more lives as these doctors and nurses go about helping heal the sick while fully being protected themselves from head to toe. All because we weren’t simply content to just tie a red ribbon and instead dared to stand up, be counted and, in our own little way, bravely put up a fight against one of the most virulent viruses known to humankind.
If you wish to donate to the UST HS Batch ’81 fund drive for the benefit of the country’s doctors and other healthcare workers, please see details in the picture below.
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