WHO Director launches face mask campaign

Mariecar Jara-Puyod, Senior Reporter

The major role of the health worker in the COVID19 global outbreak saga continues.

From the twice-a-week World Health Organisation (WHO) Media Briefing on the Novel Coronavirus (COVID19) held in Geneva, Switzerland on Monday afternoon (2 p.m. UAE time), director general Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus launched the “Face Mask Campaign.” He urged healthcare workers and frontliners to submit photographs of themselves in face masks “as a symbol of national unity and global solidarity” against the SARS-CoV2 virus. More importantly, to encourage everyone to keep on observing all the guidelines or precautionary measures which include cough etiquette, hand hygiene, and social distancing.

On Tuesday afternoon and from Abu Dhabi, Burjeel Hospital medical director Dr. Lalu Chacko told Gulf Today: “More than anybody else, the healthcare worker should lead by example. When the healthcare worker steps forward, it would serve as an encouragement for others regarding the importance and more so about the safety of the vaccine.”

Implying coeporate social responsibility, he said: “We are committed to the society and community we live in and we felt it is only right that we continue to do our part.”

“We are on a campaign to recruit many more employees (to participate),” Chacko added.

The medical director was interviewed for, during the Eid Al Adha holidays, 109 healthcare workers including doctors and nurses of the tertiary health facility alongside the other members of the VPS Healthcare namely LLH, Lifecare and Medeor Hospitals in the capital and Musaffah, queued as volunteers at the ongoing UAE-China Phase III COVID19 candidate vaccine trial.

Venue of the 42-day programme, managed by the Abu Dhabi Health Services Corp. and the Abu Dhabi-based G42 Healthcare which is into Artificial Intelligence among other technology systems, is the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre.

G42 Healthcare and Sinopharm of the state-owned China National Biotech Group had collaborated for the world’s first Phase III COVID19 candidate vaccines trial wherein total number of volunteers was marked at 13,000 and representative of the multi-ethnicity of the UAE.

Sinopharm had researched and developed two “inactivated vaccines” against COVID19 from its two facilities--at the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products and at the Beijing Institute of Biological Products.”