Over the past seven days, Direct Relief delivered 361 shipments of requested medical aid to 40 U.S. states and territories and ten countries worldwide, including Ukraine.

The shipments contained 1.6 million defined daily doses of medication, including N-95 masks, mental health medications, antibiotics, chronic disease medications, nutritional products, insulin, and cancer treatments.

UKRAINE RESPONSE

Since February 24, Direct Relief has provided medical aid weighing more than 1.4 million pounds, or 700 tons in weight, with more on the way. Over the past seven days, shipments including cold-chain antibiotics and surgical medications departed Direct Relief’s warehouse in Santa Barbara, California, bound for Ukraine.

Also, this week, 200,000 doses of Covid-19 therapy medication transported by Direct Relief were received by Ukraine’s Ministry of Health in Lviv, with four more shipments to follow. Additional shipments that arrived in Ukraine this week include a seventh field hospital kit donated by the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services and 60 pallets of humanitarian aid to Help Ukraine Romania.

Direct Relief is responding directly to specific medical requests from Ukraine’s Ministry of Health and NGOs and local organizations in Ukraine providing health care.

Power for Health

This week, Direct Relief also announced a $650,000 grant to build one of the nation’s largest solar resilience hubs in New Orleans. The grant to Together New Orleans’ Community Lighthouse project will fund the construction of the first solar- and battery-powered resilience hub in the Gulf at CrescentCare, a community health center providing health services to underserved populations in New Orleans.

The grant is part of Direct Relief’s Power for Health initiative, which aims to help nonprofit community health centers and charitable clinics in the U.S. remain operational through increasingly common power outages resulting from natural disasters.

Bolstering Mental Health in the US

Additionally, Direct Relief, the National Association of Free and Charitable Clinics (NAFC), and Teva Pharmaceuticals this week launched a new program to expand medication access and provide grant funding to free and charitable clinics that care for medically underserved patients diagnosed with depression or anxiety. Initially set in Florida, New Jersey and California, the new pilot program aims to advance access to mental health care for uninsured populations.

Operational Snapshot

WORLDWIDE

This week, outside the U.S., Direct Relief shipped more than 7.7 million defined daily doses of medication.

Countries that received medical aid over the past week included:

UNITED STATES

Direct Relief delivered 350 shipments containing 1.6 million doses of medications over the past week to organizations, including the following:

YEAR TO DATE (GLOBAL)

Since January 1, 2022, Direct Relief has delivered 8,275 shipments to 1,584 healthcare organizations in 52 U.S. states and territories and 78 countries.

These shipments contained 260 million defined daily doses of medication valued at $982.3 million (wholesale) and weighing 8.6 million lbs.

IN THE NEWS

• Since February, Direct Relief has sent 1.3 million pounds of supplies to Ukraine – KSBY: “Direct Relief, a 501(C)3 nonprofit organization, is based in Santa Barbara. The group has rallied forces to send aid overseas to Ukraine since the February 24 invasion. Supplies include daily medicine doses of antibiotics, insulin, mental health medicines, cancer treatments, antidotes to chemical weapons and COVID-19 treatments.”
• Eskenazi Health Intensifies Social Determinants of Health Resources – Indianapolis Recorder: “With recent funding from Direct Relief, a California-based humanitarian organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other groups, Eskenazi Health has doubled the community health worker staff in its primary care health system and created a specialized internal training onboarding process.“
• Direct Relief Provides More Than 650 Tons of Medical Aid to Ukrainians Since War’s Start – WTOK-TV: “In the three months since Russian forces began their invasion of Ukraine on February 24, Direct Relief has been one of the largest charitable providers of medical aid to Ukraine, delivering more than 650 tons (1.3 million pounds) of medicines and supplies with a wholesale value of more than $315 million.”
• WHO delivers lifesaving oxygen to Sierra Leone – GasWorld: “Organizations such as Direct Relief have sought to both increase health equity and save lives across low and middle income countries (LMICs) by committing to supplying healthcare providers with funding of $5m (£3.7m) to acquire essential medical oxygen systems.”