Letter: Looking for more Busy Bees

Tabi Thrash of Ballito writes:

I have contacted “10 Million Masks” (as advertised in the press) and have been making cloth masks to their standard pattern.

I wonder if there are any other Busy Bees in the greater Ballito area who are also making masks?

Our President has just announced that everybody needs to wear a mask when they go out.

This not only protects you, but everyone else you are in contact with and certainly helps to slow down the rate of transmission.

While it is possible to buy medical masks here in Ballito, washable and re-usable cotton masks can be made at a fraction of the cost, and are perfectly good protection for people to use for ordinary everyday trips to the shops, etc, which would allow the medical masks to be available for health workers.

There is a massive shortage of all PPE for our medical professionals – I gave 40 cloth masks to the doctor in charge of a 280-bed provincial hospital in Zululand who told me they have absolutely no protective equipment.

Although what they really require are proper medical masks (amongst other things), they are so desperate that my cotton masks are better than nothing.

I had previously given some masks to people working at the site of a quarantine/isolation facility being built in Durban.

Although it does not sound like very many, it takes a lot of time and more importantly, it takes a lot of materials!

However, one of the advantages is that these masks (for ordinary general use) can be washed and re-used again and again.

I would very much like to carry on making cloth masks but have now used all of my fabric ends, cotton tape and sewing elastic.

If any readers have cotton off-cuts, cotton tape and elastic, that would be suitable and would like to help an important community cause, I would be very grateful if they would donate these as I am making all of the masks without charge.

I will however make every effort to ensure that they get to people who really need them through the support of “10 Million Masks”.

I can be contacted via WhatsApp at 083 387 2477.

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