Friends launch platform for people to send masks to healthcare workers

Liz Klinger and Chloe Alpert knew that healthcare services all over the world where experiencing severe shortage of protective equipment, indispensable during the COVID-19 pandemic. Chloe is the CEO of a company which manages hospital’s medical equipment inventory and Liz explained that “My mom is a nurse, and she told me they weren’t being provided masks on her floor, which was obviously kind of concerning. And I was hearing that my mom’s experience was far from the only experience like that — U.S. healthcare workers across the country need masks.”

So, the two friends got together and launched Mask Match (mask-match.com) – a website that helps people with spare masks send them directly to healthcare workers on the front lines who need them — without needing to leave their house.

The website has two different sections: one for healthcare workers, who can send requests for the material they need; and another for people who have masks available and want to know where they can send them to. The team of volunteers running the website than matches the requests with the offers and send the donor the information for shipping the material.

In the first 48 hours the platform received more than 1000 requests from healthcare workers in need of masks and more than 200 people offering to provide them. Two weeks later, more than 50.000 masks had been sent and the number keeps rising.

More information: https://www.mask-match.com/

Adapted from: https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Mask-Match-website-donations-heal...