MCB donates medical supplies, laptop worth R204,000 to health department |22 July 2020

The presentation ceremony (Photo: Louis Toussaint)

Medical supplies including re-usable clinical dental coats, scrub suits and a laptop worth R204,000 have been donated to the health department and the Health Care Agency by the Mauritius Commercial Bank under its corporate social responsibility initiative.

Part of the donated supplies will go towards adding the finishing touches to the newly opened quarantined centre on South East Island.

Bernard Jackson, Mauritius Commercial Bank (MCB) managing director, handed over samples of the supplies to the chief executive of the Health Care Agency (HCA) Dr Danny Louange and his deputy Kathleen Cecile in a short ceremony which took place at the MCB headquarters, Caravelle House, on Monday afternoon.

Mr Jackson noted after the handover that “when our country was in a lockdown situation, we saw and realised how important it was to have a good health care system and how effective the communication was. We commend the team of the health department for the service they are rendering to the community, especially for the essential service and to ensure that we are safe.”

“Everybody understood what the situation was and we were amazed by the quality of communication from the health department and the Health Care Agency. This had a great impact on the people in the community and how they behaved. We even saw in our banks that at customer level, people were cooperating and understanding the situation.”

Mr Jackson also noted that “we know that there are challenges due to the economic crisis and we went to the HCA to see how we can help them. We went through our corporate social responsibility scheme and realised we can help the HCA with the manufacturing of re-usable protective equipment for the health department staff as well as putting the finishing touches to the newly opened quarantine centre on South East Island. We contacted two local businesses and they came forward to help us get the materials. We were able to get everything done locally and with this donation we express our gratitude to all the staff of the HCA. And we welcome more similar initiatives in the future.”

On behalf of the HCA and the health department, Dr Danny Louange thanked the MCB for this generous donation. “There is a big team working behind the scene to control, contain and manage the situation. This team is supporting us and the country and it is interesting because the donation goes towards equipping the team. For me it is heart-warming to accept such a donation as the item will go directly to the persons who are really helping Seychelles against this invisible enemy. This donation will also help them to plan ahead against the storm that is coming ahead. We are grateful that the MCB management looked into our needs.”

The two local entrepreneurs who helped make the materials are Daniella Alcindor who made 323 clinical dental coats and Mona Ah-Shung who made 350 scrub suits. They both had helpers to complete these tasks and they were both praised by the MCB management for looking into other alternatives and trust in the local entrepreneurs for such a project.

Vidya Gappy