Save Liver SLAP - Information sharing and protective materials donation to fight COVID-19

Since the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020, our community is struggling with lack of scientific information for patients. There was a lot of misinformation among the general public and because of that the panic increased. Although the Ministry of Health regularly published information to protect and preserve health during a pandemic, people received it with distrust.

The project Save Liver - SLAP implemented with the support of IAPO’s COVID-19 Response Activity Grant was of great importance for our patient community. In order to protect and support our patients and contribute to stop the spread of the disease, we developed educational materials with information from the World Health Organization and other reliable sources. We translated the information to Macedonian and shared published on our social media.

We have also created a help line where people can ask everything that they want to know about COVID-19. We are happy to share that we had a lot of people calling asking for various information about the virus, even more than we expected. The most frequently asked questions were: “How can we better protect ourselves from the virus?”, “Are masks enough to protect us from the virus?” and “What happens if we get infected with the virus?”. We were impressed with the willingness of people to be better informed, and understand what we are all dealing with and how to fight it as best as we can.

The other part of the project was the donation of protective materials (masks and gloves) to the health facilities most in need in our community, as well as to people that contacted us and weren’t able to afford these. We donated the biggest part of the masks and gloves to our local hospital and ambulance service. This gesture was received with great happiness and respect, as there aren’t many donations like these available. So the donations were felt like breath of fresh air for them. No matter how small the help was, it meant a lot for them.

We are delighted and most thankful for this opportunity to help people in our community, working on the front line to support patients and fight the pandemic. It is an amazing feeling to be able to help in these tough times.

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