São Paulo – The Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce has launched a campaign earlier this week to fight the new coronavirus pandemic. The organization will raise donations for public hospitals and charity entities that attends to the low-income population.
As a first action, the Arab Chamber itself will donate 30,000 masks, 1,250 liters of hand sanitizers and 5,700 hospital pillowcases to Santa Marcelina, the largest public hospital in the East Zone of São Paulo. The hospital primarily attends trough the Sistema Único de Saúde (SUS) in the city’s most populated region and was asking for funds and material to treat COVID-19 patients.
The donations are expected to arrive at their destination on April 6. “The Arab Chamber believes this is a moment of mobilization and solidarity. The initiative of raising donations is a way to place our resources and skills at the society’s disposal in order to deal with waht it’s likely to be the largest pandemic in the century. We want to encourage solidarity between other chambers, federations and the third sector,” the Chamber’s president Rubens Hannun (pictured above) was quoted as saying in a press release.
The campaign will be announced in the entity’s social media aimed at encouraging members, companies connected to Arab-Brazilian community, and entities in both Brazil and the Arab countries.to participate. Arab Chamber marketing vice president Riad Younes, who’s a doctor, explains that the effort of raising money will last until the end of the pandemic. “We’ll open an account where people can donate. The funds will be used entirely to acquire the specific equipment and materials that the hospitals or entities need the most,” Younes says, adding that the Chamber will soon announce a donation channel.
Since March 23, the Arab Chamber has implemented measures to avoid the spread of coronavirus. The organization’s professionals in the cities of São Paulo, Itajaí, Santa Catarina and Dubai, United Arab Emirates are working from home to minimize exposure. The entity’s certification service is also working remotely, and certificates of product origin and exports documents (sanity and halal certificates), which are mandatory to ship cargos to the Arab countries, have been maintained.
Translated by Guilherme Miranda
