• Health

Stronger together

The Pupkewitz Foundation, through the Citizen’s Campaign, aims to protect healthcare workers who are at the forefront of the coronavirus pandemic.
Through raising funds, this initiative aims to help with the provision of the necessary protective gear to healthcare workers to better equip them to take care of their wellbeing during the fight against Covid-19.
Ally Angula, the non-executive director on the Pupkewitz Holdings Board and a committee member on the audit and risk subcommittee, believes it is of utmost importance to support individuals working in healthcare during this time to ensure they are protected.
“Combating Covid-19 in Namibia is going to take a coordinated effort between citizens, corporate Namibia and the government. We need to enter the global race to procure ventilators and protective gear as quickly as possible,” she added.
“Namibians by nature do care for each other, so we thought that if we asked them to stand together by contributing towards protecting healthcare workers at the forefront of this pandemic, that they will heed our call,” Angula added.
This idea was initiated by a conversation from one of the Pupkewitz Holdings directors who thought that they are equipped to start this initiative seeing that they are invested in a payment Tech platform in the form of PayToday. This platform has a donation component that will enable citizens to join the call and donate. “Given that the Pupkewitz Foundation has been actively working for years assisting our communities, this seemed like perfect match,” Angula said.
More about the Pupkewitz Foundation
About 40% of Namibians live in informal settlements; which is about 995 000 Namibians who are living without access to running water in their homes.
“In addition to this, self-isolation is virtually impossible. These conditions create an environment where controlling the spread of the virus is difficult,” said Angula.
“We understand that Namibia will not be immune to the impacts of COVID-19 and the government cannot be left alone in handling what is a global pandemic,” Angula said.
The funds raised through the Citizen’s Campaign will mainly be invested in protecting medical personnel in this fight against Covid-19, through providing protective masks, protective goggles as well as protective face shields.
“Our first order of these items, specifically the 3M N95 masks and goggles will be dispatched to health care workers at the Onandjokwe Hospital in the north. The availability of these items is reducing with each passing day as global demand surges. Unfortunately, although these items become accessible every day, they are being bought up as quickly as they are made available,” Angula said.
Angula further added that they can only place an order when payment is guaranteed and, hence, the need is there to have a ready fund to access these much-needed supplies.
“We encourage other Namibian citizens to join us and thank those that have donated already as we have now after much search and research located a responsibly priced supplier for these items that we require,” Angula concluded.