Bx. school donates science supplies to hosp

A Bronx school has donated all its science supplies to a local hospital, part of a nationwide grassroots effort to help health care workers on the front lines of the fight against coronavirus.

Fordham Prep, a Jesuit high school, gave hundreds of safety goggles, boxes of gloves and dozens of aprons to St. Barnabas Hospital on Saturday, according to the Rev. Christopher Devron, the school’s president.

“Even though it’s a small drop in the bucket, if through our getting this out there others do the same, I think it could go a long way,” Devron told the Daily News. “It only seems like the right thing to do.”

The donation came after Devron had a conversation with Dr. Ernest Patti, senior attending physician of emergency medicine at St. Barnabas and the father of a senior at the school, who told him the science supplies would be a great help to first responders.

“This is about going to where the greatest need is, and when we start operations up we’ll buy new ones, but our mission at Fordham Prep has always been about faith, scholarship and service,” said Devron. “It’s an extension of our mission of service to our community.”

On a national level, compaswitching nies are manufacturing lines to create more masks, but the production doesn’t always find its way to small clinics in rural areas.

The newfound service Mask Match, an online platform based out of California, is connecting residents throughout the country who have extra masks with health care workers who need them.

“Basically the whole manufacturing and supply chain is a really complicated process,” said co-founder Liz Klinger, who runs the site with a small group of volunteer do-gooders.

“The point is to create this inventory of masks that usually wouldn’t be going anywhere else and to send it directly to the health care workers themselves. We are trying to cut some of that middleman out.”

The service allows for individuals, like many in California who stocked up on masks due to forests fires, to ship their supplies directly to health care workers who have applied for the resources.

The site launched Friday, and over the weekend has paired and helped ship 250 masks, according to Klinger.