Cardinal Health donates 1 million-plus products to help contain Ebola outbreak in West Africa

STAMFORD, Conn. — Cardinal Health on Tuesday announced it had recently donated more than 1 million products to AmeriCares Emergency Response Program to help contain the deadly Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Cardinal also recently donated more than 500,000 protective masks, nearly 100,000 gowns, 76,000 biohazard bags and 21,000 protective shoe covers for frontline health workers fighting the epidemic.

 

AmeriCares has delivered eight shipments to Liberia and Sierra Leone valued at more than $1 million in response to the Ebola outbreak — the worst in history. More aid deliveries are planned in the coming weeks.

 

“Health workers in West Africa risk their lives every day just by going to work,” said AmeriCares president and CEO Michael Nyenhuis. “Thanks to Cardinal Health, we can help protect doctors and nurses on the front lines of the epidemic from infection.”

 

 

The World Health Organization reports more than 4,000 people have died from the outbreak, including more than 200 health workers. As many as 1.4 million people in Liberia and Sierra Leone could become infected by January, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned, if more isn’t done to stop the spread of the disease.

 

“As a company with concerns for the health and well-being of people around the world, we’re proud to be able to support international relief efforts in this way,” said Mike Duffy, president, Medical Products at Cardinal Health. “And we’re glad to have a long-standing affiliation with organizations like AmeriCares that are able to quickly deploy products to the places they’re needed most.”

 

Cardinal Health has supported AmeriCares emergency response work and global health programs for 18 years, and its donations to charitable organizations average more than $9 million annually. AmeriCares has delivered Cardinal Health products to survivors of the 2004 Southeast Asia tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, the 2010 Haiti earthquake and the 2011 Japan earthquake and tsunami, among other emergencies.