Covid: MAGNA is helping at home because it is needed

BRATISLAVA (17 April 2020) – The humanitarian organization MAGNA will provide protective equipment, disinfectants and soaps for personal hygiene. At the same time, MAGNA Health Teams will monitor the health status of the elderly and train staff and home clients to be able to protect themselves against infection as much as possible. Worldwide statistics as well as events in the Social Services Home in Pezinok show that the elderly and retirement homes where the elderly live are among the most vulnerable groups threatened by the coronavirus.

We also help cancer patients whose lives are seriously threatened by the spread of the new coronavirus. In close cooperation with medical operators, we distribute respirators to them.

“MAGNA always focuses on protecting the most vulnerable. Whether they are children, pregnant women, victims of violence or chronic patients and marginalized people, or in the case of the coronavirus pandemic, the elderly and cancer patients whose lives are at risk. Therefore, we will provide them not only with material help but also with information to protect themselves. Even the latest case from the Social Services Home in Pezinok shows that the protection of the elderly and the assistance of the staff of such facilities must become a priority in Slovakia so that they do not turn into an outbreak. We feel that a system assistance to the elderly has been forgotten, ”says MAGNA Operations Director Denisa Augustínová.

MAGNA teams, made up of healthcare professionals, will not only distribute protective equipment and disinfectants to individual retirement homes across Slovakia, but will also monitor health, test and train the elderly and the staff.

“We are convinced that it is not enough just to hand over the material in the retirement homes. Caretakers and the elderly themselves need to be made familiar with the basic information on how the coronavirus spreads and how to protect themselves. The reliance on the media to provide this information is one of the obstacles to the elderly protecting themselves more consistently,” adds MAGNA Director Martin Bandžák.

In addition, MAGNA has taken action in all its humanitarian health interventions around the world – in South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Cambodia – to take action against the coronavirus and the spread of Covid-19. Despite the pandemic, MAGNA medical teams have remained with their patients and continue to help and treat them.