Students prepare supplies to aid Ukraine


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Blueprints for Pangaea donations included supplies such as face masks, gloves and face shields, along with some specialty items, such as syringes and gauze for wound care. (Photo courtesy of Blueprints for Pangaea USC)

Prompted by the healthcare emergency in Ukraine — where there is an urgent need for supplies and support for citizens and refugees — students from the USC chapter of Blueprints for Pangaea donated USC Keck School of Medicine supplies to aid those impacted by the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian conflict. Collecting 45 pallets of personal protective equipment and specialty materials, the chapter plans to ship 15 of these pallets Monday. 

The organization partnered with Not Just Tourists, a non-USC affiliated organization, to organize and ship materials to Ukraine. Using Not Just Tourists’ network, the club worked to provide supplies and find ways to get it to Ukraine. 

With help from Not Just Tourists, the club was able to identify and connect with representatives from organizations Hope2Ukraine, Nova Ukraine, Samaritan’s Purse and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, who would help ship supplies. 

Founded in 2020, the chapter of the organization aims to “redirect excess and unused medical supplies to areas of need,” according to Irene Li, a senior majoring in biomedical engineering and member of the operations team. The operations team of the fully student-run club is in charge of this coordination of shipments between donors and beneficiaries.

“When real time disasters happen and humanitarian crises occur, it’s really important that we respond very quickly,” said Asna Tabassum, a sophomore majoring in biomedical engineering and vice president of operations.

After taking inventory of the available supplies at Keck, the organization counted the 45 pallets consisting of personal protective equipment, including face masks, gloves and face shields. The pallets also comprised specialty materials such as syringes, HEPA filters, oral swabs, gauze and burn and wound care. Pallets are four-by-four square wooden frames used to store stacked boxes of supplies. Each pallet can get to be six to eight feet tall. 

Available supplies were either overpurchased by Keck during the pandemic or donated from local organizations such as churches and nonprofits. Some came from medical TV shows, such as “Grey’s Anatomy,” that dropped off supplies at the Keck warehouse when production stopped due to the pandemic. The hospital was not able to use these supplies for administrative reasons, so they were left unused and available. 

“A lot of companies just make an excess [of supplies] or hospitals may have excess that may expire soon or there’s a lot of regulations in regards to if it simply even enters patient rooms,” said operations team member Aivy Levan, a freshman majoring in biological sciences. “[Supplies] have to be thrown out, so we essentially take all of these excess supplies and redistribute them to other organizations.”

According to strict guidelines from the Ministry of Health of Ukraine, which includes an outline and guidance on supplies the country needs, a lot of personal protective equipment from international resources is not included. Expenses of shipping supplies from abroad are much higher than buying from neighboring European countries and then shipping the supplies directly through the borders. 

Therefore, not all of the Keck supplies will end up in Ukraine, said Krishni Satchi, a junior majoring in health promotion and disease prevention. Instead, Blueprints for Pangaea is also working with Hope Beyond Borders to ship leftover supplies to Venezuela, where there is a high demand for personal protective equipment due to low medical access and low buying power. 

Since 2020, the chapter has donated 17,700 N95 masks and 800 sterile isolation gowns with a combined worth of more than $120,000 to eight nonprofit organizations. Most of the donated supplies went to help the unhoused community in Los Angeles, nonprofit organization volunteers and even some clinics in Mexico. 

“Blueprints [for Pangaea] has a really awesome mission, and our team has been working together super well and working on the fly,” Li said. “I don’t think initiatives like this would be able to happen without the hard work ethic of the rest of the operations team.”