With the ongoing brutality and ruthless speed of the COVID-19 pandemic and self-isolation by communities across the world, the front line health workforce is facing challenges of enormous proportions.  Locally, the news media has inundated the community with the colossal shortage of basic medical protective equipment.

The local Indian community led by Ms. Chandra Mehta decided to assist the medical community with their safety protection equipment.  With the critical ongoing shortage of protective masks, Chandra came up with an idea of designing and fabricating the face masks to be distributed to the local health professionals.  She took a leadership role in bringing many women volunteers together and the project was up and running within a couple of days.

The group dusted off their sewing machines, procured the necessary materials and worked tirelessly from home to fabricate the much-needed face masks.  The homemade masks were delivered to Dr. Ritu Joshi at the Spring Valley Hospital and Bhavna Jain of Centennial Hospital, to be used by the medical staff.  The enthusiastic team decided to fabricate a reusable washable double layer fabric mask.  The designed mask, with a small pocket, has the option of inserting additional filters.

The team of “Chandra the Riveter” volunteered to join hands for the much-needed protective masks.  The diverse volunteer group led by Chandra Mehta, included Rachna Gupta, Nirmala Maan, Medha Limaye, Parul Patel, Rehana Byuiyan Popy, Arti Bansal, Andrea Karnataka, Saroj Chatterjee, Ruby Dhariwal, Puneet Rajpal, Monisha Saxena, Manasa Khandavalli, Kirti Joshi, Kamal Asnani, Monika Khemka, Lipika Mukopadhyay, Lily Zhao, and Chandrika Dayal.

The dedicated group is seeking new volunteers to assist them with making additional masks as there is ongoing crucial demand from the health care professionals.