Imtiaz Sooliman – Gift of the Givers offers help to Booysens fire victims
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
Let's talk to the story in our gift of the givers, was on site to
in a Boysen in Johannesburg yesterday, assisting disaster
management metropolis and Ward councilors to deal with the fire
that started late afternoon. About 400 checks affected at displacing
2000 people. Disaster Management were efficient in putting out the
place once the affected residents, or rather, once the affected
residents were settled in their dwellings. Gift of the giver says
it will provide mattresses, food parcels, hygiene packs and
stationery. We're joined now via Skype by the gift of the givers.
Founder, doctor in tears, Suleman, a very good morning to you,
doctor, India's Suleman, thank you so much for making the time. Good
morning to you. Thank you very much for having me on your program
before you ask your first question. I just like to offer my
condolences to for Jackson mtembo, I knew personally, and condolences
to his family, to the community, to the government, today, today
and see a wonderful man, a great loss. Very straightforward, very
frank, very pleasant to deal with it. It's a great loss to our
society. Absolutely in agreement with you. A really great loss.
Tell us about the work you're doing in poisons. How's gift of
the givers, assisting those affected by the fire.
We're on site already. Right now. As I'm speaking to you, our teams
are distributing support. The queues are already there. People
are waiting in the line. We were there yesterday evening, right at
the 11pm just consoling the people. They virtually lost
everything. The fire destroyed everything. All the structures
were flat on the ground. People then went to the halls, the women
and children. But in just most cases, almost top of most all
cases, when it comes to fire like this, people don't really like to
hit the site where the house was. They feel it. They'll lose the
site. So many people want to stay on site. So we were there early
this morning already distributing hot meals to them, water. They get
very thirsty during situations like this. I'm providing blankets
and in diapers and baby pottage right now, the moment they get
into their homes. And again, it's a new standard in our society that
they come up very, very quickly. They build very clear within the
first 24 hours. Once they settle in their homes, we will then
provide them with food parcels and hygiene packs, because it's easier
to once look after them once in your own house. We'll be giving
them sleeping bags now, but we'll add mattresses later on and new
clothing. But of course, for school starting in around 15 days
time, or just a little longer than that, we're going to provide
stationary force. What's the most urgent need all
items that I've mentioned? You know, food is required, water
clothing, they require new clothing. Please remember, we
don't take old clothes. We require new clothing. They have lost
everything. So any type of new clothing, food items, any you
know, hygiene packs, toothbrushes, soap, detergents, any of those
type of items, raw blankets. We need more blankets, you know, and
more mattresses. All those should be a great value, because it's a
lot of houses to cover. There's between 405 100. Nobody knows the
exact number. They're still writing the things around. So it
probably be 500 families that need all these items, adding up to
about 2000 people. Doctor Sullivan, do we know if there are
any fatalities?
They, unfortunately, this fire. They were no fatalities. But it
has been great year that, after a long time where no fatalities in
the fire, and again, every year US time, we always have some kind of
fire, but this one, fortunately, there were no fatalities. I know
it's no cause for celebration, but for a while now, almost a year,
your major focus has been on, specifically on covid 19 related
situations. What are your covid 19 considerations as you go into this
particular situation
where, in in the the poison fire, you talk about specifically, yes,
yeah, it's this rule is very simple. It's a standard rule.
Everybody has to make sure you can your social distancing, make sure
you've got your mask on, sanitize, and that's what we do it every
distribution. This was only fire by the way we responded to during
covid 19. We've done several fires throughout the year, from the
beginning, since March 15. So we've been involved in many fires,
even storms. The big storm in AMTA did destroyed so many houses.
Fires in khayelsha, in Yanga, in Langa, in many other in Philippi
last week, in many, many places, we've been involved in the same
situation, but we have to say a big part as much as you try to
keep the social distancing, because there's desperation,
sometimes the rules get broken. People get too close to each
other, people are worried that they will not get the items. And
even when we're doing water distribution on a daily basis, you
know, you say the same story for almost 10 months, but you can't
blame the people, because they never know where the next water or
the next passes will come from. So as much as you try, and as much as
they try, in the human need of desperation, the markets get
blurred.
Dr Silverman, give us an update of you've.
Touched a bit on some all the covid 19 related work that gift of
the givers has been doing throughout the country, where
there are different needs, and perhaps if you can also tell us
about the cost implications, where you know, we can make a call out
to South Africans to ask for assistance.
Well, let's start off with a cost implication. It's huge. There's no
it's it's very, very huge. And because we're drilling balls right
now, we're busy. Adelaide is a town that has virtually collapsed.
None of the municipality boards are working. The only balls that
are working, they are literally give us they're hoping to open
several more balls next week. You know, we're busy right now
connecting balls. Many, many other towns require balls. So balls is a
huge cost, and we need to do many of that. That's part of our covid
19 intervention. What are water? There is no cleanliness, no
hygiene, no sanitation, and of course, there's no health. You
can't take medication, and without water, the body will not survive.
The next big thing is infrastructure. We've just
renovated. Last week, you've covered it on your programs,
doctor's accommodation in visual hospital, because we put up 120
bed covid 19 facility on site, but with more beds, means more staff.
And this hospital didn't have reasonable or decent
accommodation. And every time the doctors came within 24 and 48
hours, they left because they want to stay in the car. The kind of
accommodation. So on Monday, we just opened up a new facility. We
look at opening up a second facility so more doctors can stay
on site. Then a few weeks before that, in just before Christmas, we
opened up two wards, high care wards, what oxygen points in
Sultan Hospital in Makanda, and we and earlier to that in August, we
set up a whole ward in Mitchell, Spain hospital called the freezer
Ward, and it has a dedicated 60 bed covid 19 facility. What oxygen
points? We just added 18 more oxygen points and the second wave,
it's a bit of huge use to the Western Cape Province. We're
getting calls from other hospitals right now, acquiring
infrastructure changes to make themselves more safe, more clean.
So infrastructure is another big thing. The need for PPEs is again.
The calls are coming from all over, and all hospitals tell us
the same thing, we have nothing. We need pulse oximeters. We need
clouds. We need thermometers. We're doing that. Our biggest
project in the last three weeks has been the delivery of CPAP
machines. CPAP machines are oxygen machines that deliver oxygen at
low flow or intermediate flow, between 10 liters and 30 liters,
and that has been an incredible success throughout the country.
All medical people are kind getting back to us and say, Where
was this machine? It's saving lives. It's so easy to use. We're
opening more warts, putting more patients on this machines, and
they don't use as much oxygen as the high flow as much oxygen as
the high flow machines. But while saying that, we're also rolling
out high flow machines, because those are also life saving when
the CPAP doesn't work. And then, of course, we've been giving scrap
suits. Those are the reusable green jacket and pants that the
doctors wear. A lot of call for that. And yesterday, we launched a
new project called hospital heroes in the second wave. What has
touched the country and as what has touched the medical profession
is the massive loss of life of healthcare workers. We haven't
seen so many medical people die so quickly in a day 810, in a day
around the country, and just to honor them, to acknowledge them,
to encourage them, to motivate them, to make them feel good. We
launched a project where we buy simple stuff, stuff which they can
afford easily, a chocolate, a bottle of water, a juice, a cake,
a co sister. But the impact that it had starting off at Somerset
hospital yesterday was just too huge. It's about emotional,
psychological support and satisfaction and encouragement.
Sometime in the future, we reported about a disagreement
talking about your water provision interventions. We We reported
about a disagreement you were having with the Makanda
municipality in terms of how you are trying to help with water
provision there. How are you finding your partnership with
government in this roll out of covid 19 interventions have things
improved?
Look, it's a very strange situation. You get guys inside
government, we're not happy with what you drink, and you can guys
in the same department go over the rule for what you are doing. It's
a it's a question of how systems work, how they do their policy
and, you know, and personalities. What is the same municipality you
would find some people, you know, the problem is, to be blunt, is
people feel they've been shown up. Because this kind of stuff should
have been by government, done by government, and should have been
done a long time ago. I think Makanda, you raised a very
important question. Makanda, the mayor, called us three days ago
and he said, Look, I need to make it clear we have no money. I said,
I know that from the beginning. You know that's why we got
involved. But that's why, when we spoke to you and your
municipality, you said you get money from the National Disaster
Fund, which of course, never happened. You.
And it was a 20 Rand project, which they were supposed to pay
for, which we ended up paying for. But we didn't mind, because the
people I need, and we still they every single day, Monday to
Sunday, with the water tankers. But coming back to him on on,
three days ago, I offered him some time ago, I said, we will drill
seven boreholes in my neck. You guys haven't used all those holes
now, the cars were no water. All the balls are shutting it out, and
we can fill the dam with those balls. So he said, Look, the
municipality will provide electrical connections. Can you
reactivate all those balls? And this morning, strangely, I send
the instruction to my geologists and and the water team to go on
site to see if you can do that. And we put three balls in the
university in Rhodes. If we add all those 10 together, we can
provide a substantial amount of water to the town. But to answer
your question, yes, we do have a fantastic relationship with people
inside government. At ministerial level, we got an excellent
relationship with Minister Lindiwe. We have a relationship
with the municipalities. What the councilors in between. Of course,
there's some people not happy with what we do. But I mean, at the
end, when they see what we do, everybody comes to the party
talking about that excellent relationship you have with
Minister Sisulu. Are you using it at all to empower local
communities? Because I'm thinking it's all good and well to bring in
boreholes. But what about teaching, whether municipal staff
or local communities how to build a borehole from start, from
scratch, so they they can find a way of sustaining these
measures that you're putting in place to help
local communities cannot build balls. It's impossible. They can't
do that. They can look after what has been given to them. Even
municipalities, they have to look after what's given to them. Let's
go to the process. You find a site, 50 people call you. You miss
Valley, call you, say there's no water here. Our geologists tell
hooks, Google and Google Map, proper distance from even 1000
kilometers away, we can tell you where the water is, you will come
there and then on come on Saturday's potential. You will
come on site. You have on site itself. There's different
processes to drill which communities can't do this. Even
ordinary companies can't do this. You need to know the type of rock.
You don't need to know where the Fisher is. You don't need to know
where the crack in the rock is. You know whether you need to know
whether you have to drill 30 meters, 65 meters, go beyond it or
stop. But the type of rocks that come out, you need to know whether
they want to containing or not. Water containing. You need to know
an electrical point. You need to know whether you need to put it
ODEX or other type of plastic pen. This is sheeting to protect the
Bohol so it doesn't collapse. Then you're going to choose whether
you're putting electrical pump or solar pump. And then the most
important of all this is how much water does the aquifer have?
Communities cannot know that if you take out more water than
aquifer have, that aquifer will get destroyed, and the ball will
get destroyed, and noone will have water. And sometimes you drill
within the same aquifer a few meters away, I put in the second
bowl so you don't put too much of pressure. So those are all the
kind of things you gotta look at. The community has to be brought in
to say, Please, we don't want vandalization. We don't want the
pumps destroyed. We don't want you over pumping. We don't want to
stab in the JoJo tanks when the water doesn't come out. We want
you to be patient when there's no electrical supply. And now to
overcome that, we look at solar pumps instead of electrical pumps
because of Eskom situation. So those are all the different kind
of things you got to do. And again, practically, in practice,
where we found the water was running low and boats were being
over pumped by certain municipalities, we actually went
back in and we reduced the flow of the water and told them, we lock
in the pump. You cannot distribute water more than the aquifer can
recharge and refill, will be a disaster for the whole town in
weeks to come. Yeah. Noted, are you able to give us some sort of a
year? Have you been able to measure impact in terms of the
work you've been doing in the past year, since lockdown five,
lockdown number five,
it's been massive. It's been absolutely huge. We got 400 bowls
that we put up over the last two years. Each one of them is
functional. Each one provides water to between 1003 1000 people
a day. Multiplied it every day. You know, for the whole lockdown
period, we have water tankers in Malay Bedford, crafting it and
surrounding area when Karak is a difficulty, when Abu Dhabi is a
difficulty, those which, those water tankers go there, and they
have to neglect the towns that are coming from, but it's an
emergency. That's 600,000 to 800,000 liters a week, Monday to
Sunday. We've assisted more than 200 hospitals and clinics with
PPEs. That means masks, freeze pride. K 95 had yard gloves,
sanitizer, head cover, shoe cover, provided over 8000 scrubs to
hospitals, reusable surgical gowns, 1000s of pulp OXImeters and
non contact thermometers, visual angopes, two and a half 1000.
CPAP machines, 76 high flow nasal oxygen machines, and more coming
out this week, plus infrastructure development for food parcel to
300,000 families countrywide each day. Six people can eat for 30
days from the food parcel, 100 feeding centers. We put up 10
testing celic stations, three mobile stations. And besides that,
we've done a lot of other things. You started the conversation off
by sending condolences to the mtebu family. Has gift of the
givers been impacted in any way by covid 19?
Yes, we have the last few weeks. Last week has been bad. One of our
staff lost his mother on Sunday, the first well before that last
day, December, one of my staff went to hospital for something
completely unrelated. Got positive in the hospital. Didn't know was
positive, came home, but fortunately, because we kept
everybody remote, we didn't want our staff to talk to each other,
because if we were all staff gets infected, the whole organization
can't function, and it's a crisis time. We can't afford to shut
down. We've been working seven days a week from the 15th of march
up till now. We haven't stopped in December, no new year. So Shiva
and she infected. Husband will also works with us, but
fortunately, after three weeks, both of them recovered. On Sunday,
one of our staff lost his mother a day later, one of our like you can
say, semi permanent volunteers, lost his brother, his mother got
ill, and now he is ill with covid, 19 but you're recovering. And
yesterday, about two days ago, one of our volunteers, you know,
needed desperately in the southern Cape Town area, but he's gone in
fortunately, from a staff of about 90, those are the only
difficulties we've had. Unfortunately, no family members
of the staff, besides what I've mentioned, have been affected. So
the big conversation in South Africa in this year is vaccine
rollout. Do you envisage the gift of forgiveness will be part of
this process?
Many people have asked us that question. You know, it depends if
government wants a partner to roll it out. I've had medical schemes
calling me. I've had big companies calling me. I've had individual
people calling me, doctors associations calling me. But I
need to be quite frank about certain issues. You know, first of
all, I'm a I'm not a scientist, I'm not a virologist, and I'm not
a specialist on vaccines. But the part that, what is the is that
these vaccines were developed early, very early, when, when the
when the virus came was, was, you know, came into the world, and I'm
not sure if the vaccines against that virus is going to work
against the new strain. There's a lot of discussion about it. Where
does it eat the same type of protein on another side? Won't it
work? Or won't it work? Now a lot of people are saying, let's take
it either way. It may reduce the infectivity of the virus itself,
but we're not sure. Given, from the government point of view, the
financial implication of bringing 60 million vaccines times two
doses at the cost we have to pay, and we're not sure it's going to
work. Are we going to lose money or something that's not going to
work. Can we have some kind of surety, maybe a little more longer
waiting to make sure that the money we're going to spend is
actually going to benefit the population? I'm not against the
vaccine. I'm fully for it, because the long term debt for the same
lives. But also, the problem with that is, if it doesn't work,
people may have a false sense of hope they are vaccinated, but are
they immunized? That's the difference. They vaccinated, yes,
but have they got immunity? And there's a possibility they don't
get immunity. They can make their family members sick, and they can
make the patient sick, because the frontline workers are the first
ones are going to get it. So are we absolutely sure we have to have
that safeguard, and we have that side rest rolling down, when the
cold chain? Can we ensure the coal trade. What happens? Vaccines are
put in the fridge everywhere. There's no generator, and Eskom
had short notice, says we got stage four load shedding. What
happens to those vaccines? They're not properly preserved, and they
don't have generators in those hospitals. A lot of hospitals
don't have the equipment, they don't have the infrastructure.
Then we have a system to make sure that every person who gets his
first shot knows when to come back for the second shot. Do we have a
system, an app or a record system to make sure that there's there's
no duplication or nobody loses out of the second shot? There's a lot
of things to consider, and if all those things are in place, yes, we
can have we have a lot of networks, lot of logistic
capability. We can help. But these are the few things I would like to
say straight out first and a clear answer before you know if we get
involved, as I said, we already asked where many people get
involved. And the other thing I think government should reconsider
is they shouldn't be the only people buying the vaccine, because
you're talking about a herd immunity of 40 million people.
Need to get herd immunity. Are you going to get 40 million vaccines
in one month? No. So by the time you get the vaccine for the other
39 million people, you people, well, there's a chance for that
immunity. I should open it up to people that afford it to bring it
in and start take medical aid societies. They got six, 7 million
people on the record, and they try, need no charge to their
members. Instantly, by bringing the private sector in, you can
immunize.
7 million people, which would have to get your target and sort of
take the cost of government. You don't have the money. Why waste
time? Why don't you get the public sector involved? It will benefit,
and then get the public sector to say, Okay, we're very happy. We
thankful. We will fund 20% of the population who are not on
medically and will give them free vaccine. We can have a mutualistic
relationship with corporates and the public get in, and there are
people will be able to pay for 10 or 15 vaccines each, and we can
use that collective bargaining to get a vaccines quickly, to
immunize more people faster.
Solomon, you've been at the coalface of the fight against
covid 19, and I know I'm asking you to speculate here, but have
you been able to get just a sense of the impact of the
reprioritisation of funding of public hospitals and taking those
funds to the fight against covid 19. Have you seen the impact of
this activity? Yes,
this would have massive impact, if I understand your question
correctly, money has been diverted. Remember, if you look at
corporate CSI budget, the number one target on the top is
education. That's number one. Disasters are low down between you
know, they're not at the top. But with covid 19, anyone has not
number one, it's low down the list. But covid 19, there's been a
major shift of funding towards the pandemic itself. And we need to
understand, in this case, it's not about, you know, is it good for
our company? Is good to protect to check the register or take the
register? We're doing it for public image. It's not about
public image. People are scared and people are scared anyone
because they've had personal experience of people dying their
families and in the communities. So corporate CSI managers, the
CEOs of the companies, the staff and everybody else, wants to do
something that will prevent loss of life and will prevent spread of
the virus, to spread some in your family may be affected. So money
has been re prioritized towards core funding. We've heard of
corporates that have renovated an ICU, or they put up oxygen points
at a certain hospital, or they put some beds somewhere else, or they
put up, you know, other companies can put up field hospitals. People
have done done different things, and use their budgets for that,
but while using their budget for suicide, those are the same
companies that have made no income. If you take the car
industry, the sale of cars from 30,000 units a month dropped to
3000 2000 units a month. What happens to the income? So on the
one side, we got people wanting to give CSI money, and on the second
side, they are not making additional income to give
additional CSI money. And those people who are having top jobs who
could contribute, many of them, have now become recipients any
date, because if they collapse overnight, and a lot of NGOs for
them, NGO is an income job creation, and they have the people
at the same time. A lot of them have folded because the cops have
decided they're only going to work with one or two NGOs, not with
everybody, not because they don't want to, but just they just can't
afford it. So overall, yes, there's been a major, major knock
on effect in terms of job creation, NGOs, companies, rep
financing, reprioritization, prioritization of funding and
resources. Everything is diverted. Covid, 19, we were giving further
to animals, and suddenly everybody stopped. They can't give fodder.
There's no transport cost, there's no money. The animals can't be
assisted. People come first. So like that many what happened about
gender based violence? What happened about all age homes? What
happened about homes with disability? They don't they're
cool, they've they're collapsing. There's no funding for all those
things.
Doctor Suman, let's commend you once again for the amazing work
that you're doing, and you said you're in boy since now, continue
to do the wonderful work that you're doing. And thank you so
much for speaking to us today.
Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Dr imtia Suleiman is the
founder of gift of the givers in the last.