World Vision delivers nearly 30,000 Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) items to Hanford's Adventist Health facilities

What World Vision did was to ship eight fully-loaded pallets of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) – free of charge – that doctors, nurses, and hospital staff use to protect themselves from nasty germs like the coronavirus.

The humanitarian shipment, consisting of thousands of gloves, coveralls, smocks, and masks, arrived in Hanford on March 26, and according to Ed Amman, the Adventist Central Valley Health Foundation director, it will be put to good use.

“We work with the U.S. side of World Vision out of Seattle. They have a real interest in our community here.

“The PPE that World Vision provided is a real blessing to the Adventist Health and Central Valley Network,” said Ammon. “The PPE will be distributed out to our four hospitals, Reedley, Selma, Hanford, and Tulare. PPE items will also be sent to our clinics.”

Tammy Gonzales, Director of Materials Management, checks out boxes of PPE shipped by World Vision to Hanford Adventist Health.

Probably the driving force behind the early Christmas gift was the relationship Ammon fostered over the past two years with Reed Slattery, the U.S. National Director for World Vision.

“We work in over 100 countries around the world,” said Slattery, from his headquarters in Seattle. “We’re the largest non-government organization, provider of clean water.  

“Most people know about the water. We also do a lot with disaster relief around the world. Here, domestically, we have seven warehouses, and these are warehouses where we work with corporations that donate excess inventory. Then we work with the community part of it to distribute it back out to the most vulnerable here domestically.”

Slattery told The Leader World Vision has been working with Amman for at least two years. World Vision has key relationships with Costco and other donors, and sometimes things that generate out of California they’re able to direct that out there to his (Amman) operation in Hanford and Reedley.

“They’re working with other community partners, church partners, community-based organizations, and they’re getting these resources out to vulnerable communities.”

World Vision’s work does not go unnoticed. Worldwide, the humanitarian agency aims to support 11 million people; about 6 million of them are vulnerable children. World Vision also works in the United States, aiming to reach 650,000 vulnerable people with family emergency kids. Each kit provides a weeks’ worth of food for a family of five, hygiene and protective items, educational supplies and resources for kids, and other essentials.

And, in addition to providing doctors with personal protective equipment, the humanitarian organization provides resources for teachers.

It was a simple phone call from Reed to Amman that got the ball rolling. “I reached out to Ed and asked if this (PPE) was a need in any of your medical facilities in the Central Valley.”

The phone call came at the right time, because Adventist, like many medical facilities in the country, was looking for PPE.

“In the last month, I’ve been talking with him about a COVID-19 response, what they’re seeing down there, and how they’re anticipating it affecting some of the vulnerable communities in that region,” recalled Slattery.

“I reached out to Ed, and I asked him if he had a need in any of your medical facilities there in the Central Valley? I think he responded back with an overwhelming yes.”

Indeed, Amman told Slattery that many of the Adventist facilities were running low of those items just as other medical facilities around the country were.

The result of that conversation was that eight fully-load pallets of PPE shipped from World Vision’s warehouse in Dallas, Texas, and from that warehouse came gloves, facemasks, smocks, coveralls, and more, just about everything a doctor or nurse needs to do his or her job.

It turns out the valuable cargo was excess inventory given to World Vision by MALT Industries, a national manufacturer of protective apparel, including medical masks, lab coats, gowns, shoe covers, gloves, coveralls, and smocks.

All totaled the generous gift amounted to 29,200 items that will eventually be used by Adventist doctors, nurses, and workers in its Valley locations, including Hanford.

“They (MALT) donated it,” said Slattery. “We partner with a lot of corporations. They’ll donate material to us for just for international and domestic work. We just happened to have those items at the time. We just set it up with our logistics carrier and got it out the door (to Hanford).”