Slowing the Spread of COVID-19, One Hand Sanitizer at a Time

The start of the COVID-19 pandemic led to an alarming global shortage of hand sanitizer and other personal protective equipment (PPE) that caused the AdventHealth supply chain team to spring into action, securing PPE supply and ensuring the health system procured enough equipment to keep team members and their patients safe.

The success of these procurement efforts has allowed the health system to sustain the needs of its team members, patients and guests, and now is beginning to support the needs of communities across the world.

AdventHealth supply chain with assistance from Global Missions has already arranged to donate about 50 pallets of hand sanitizer to several Seventh-day Adventist conferences, Adventist Community Services in both Texas and New York, non-profits in Florida and will soon be shipping donations overseas.

“We have distributed hand sanitizers to elementary and middle schools throughout Orange County in Florida, especially to lower-income communities where access to hand sanitizer is limited and at the expense of the teachers,” William Lowry, executive director of My Neighbor’s Children, said. “One of our core objectives as an organization is providing basic health care to children. This donation will assist us by not only fulfilling our core objectives, but helping prevent the spread of COVID-19 to those who are most impacted by our work.”

In addition to faith communities and non-profits, about 40 pallets of hand sanitizer have been donated to law enforcement from the Lake County Sheriff’s Department. Lieutenant Ralph McDuffie said many of the pallets will be further distributed to schools in Lake County as well as non-profits like the Red Cross.

“AdventHealth is committed to the health and well-being of the communities we serve,” Marisa Farabaugh, AdventHealth chief supply chain officer, said. “The initiative to acquire large amounts of PPE at the height of the pandemic was rooted in one our service standards, which is to keep our team members and communities safe. As a faith-based organization, we are happy to partner with our community non-profits and churches in this joint commitment to donate hand sanitizers as a measure to keep people safe.”

AdventHealth Global Missions acted as a bridge, with the help of the Community Health Impact team, to conduct outreach to almost 150 organizations, schools and sheriff’s departments for distribution of the hand sanitizer pallets. AdventHealth will also be donating pallets of hand sanitizer to Adventist higher learning institutions like Union College and Andrews University, as well as overseas locations in places like Peru, Haiti and Mexico.