BDO Foundation reaffirms commitment to rebuild lives

Cbattle-tested

ITY OF SAN FERNANDO---Filipinos are

for any type of crisis and the fight against COVID-19 is no different. Even if this unprecedented pandemic is still far from over sans the availability of a vaccine, hopes are still high with the presence of means to survive the fight.

A few months since Banking, as well as the global pandemic through BDO Credit reached the country, Card, ATMs, and BDO Foundation has br anches. already launched a Mario Deriquito, number of initiatives president of BDO to help various sectors Foundation, said the get back on their initiative forms part feet. of the Foundation’s

Giving its full suppor advocacy to rebuild t lives and provide support

BDO Foundation to hospitals, especially launched the Pesofor-Peso rural health Donation units all over the Philippines. Drive, a fundraising activity that ran from Part of the money May until July 16, raised from the drive 2020. Proceeds were funded the donation used to provide test of close to 10,000 kits and supplies to PCR test kits for use COVID-19 testing centers of 10 hospitals across in underserved the country. These recipient-hospitals communities nationwide. agreed to use the test

Under the drive, kits for frontliners and minimum donations people who cannot of P500 and maximum afford the high costs donations of up of testing. to P1 million per donor The Peso-for-Peso were matched Drive also funded the peso for peso by BDO donation of food Foundation. Donations packs to 8,000 underprivileged from BDO and families in non-BDO customers, Bacoor, Cavite; Santa as well as BDO employees, Rosa, Laguna; San poured in via Jose del Monte, the Bank’s e-banking Bu l acan ; and channels— BDO Caloocan City. Online and Mobile On top of these efforts, BDO Foundation also supported the Philippine government’s RapidPass and ReliefAgad programs, highlighting the importance of collaboration between the private sector and the national government.

The Bank, through the Foundation, donated 300 smartphones with prepaid loads and 550 powerbanks to the Department of Science and Technology in support of the RapidPass System. RapidPass used QR codes, which facilitated the quick passage of the vehicles of over 500,000 authorized frontliners. The smartphones donated by the Foundation served as QR scanners at 180 checkpoints, where there were special lanes for frontliners.

Additionally, BDO Foundation also provided support to facilitate one-time passwords to users of ReliefAgad, a web application that allowed those entitled to a cash aid to register online and to receive their financial assistance safely and swiftly through electronic payment systems or directly from banks.

Response through partnership

Isolate, test, and trace comprise the backbone of an effective COVID-19 response, according to the World Health Organization.

Many countries who have successfully contained the spread of the virus implemented such protocol. Now, the Philippines is no longer too far behind with the pilot implementation ofProject ARK s pooled RT-PCR testingin two key cities in the country, namely, Makati and Cebu.

Pooled testing combines swab samples from individuals and examines them together using a single reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test kit. Pools of five, 10 or 20 persons are tested depending on the prevalence of COVID-19 in an area.

Considered a game changer in the fight to contain the coronavirus, the method is seen to boost testing capacity, expedite tests and significantly reduce the cost of RT-PCR kits. Based on extensive research conducted by the Philippine Society of Pathologists, pooled testing is very effective.

BDO Foundation is funding the pilot implementation, covering the costs of automated extractor machines for each city, training of health workers on proper swabbing, PCR test kits, and other peripher al s.

Apart from Go Negosyo, who spearheads Project ARK, BDO Foundation is in collaboration with the local governments of Makati and Cebu, the Philippine Children’s Medical Center, who will be its partnertesting center for the pilot implementation in Makati, and the University of Cebu Medical Center and Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center for the pilot implementation in Cebu.

Pilot implementation of RT-PCR pooled testing in Makati covered 6,000 individuals, mostly market vendors and public utility drivers. In Cebu, pilot implementation will cover 4,000 individuals, also market vendors and public utility driver s.

A worthy cause BDO Unibank president and CEO Nestor V. Tan, who also sits as trustee of BDO Foundation, said the support for the pooled testing project comes with the belief that it will address the key areas of cost, accessibility, and timeliness. The implementation of the project is seen to not only benefit Cebu and Makati but will hopefully impact the whole country as well.

“We always believed that the fight against COVID is not the public sector’s alone or the private sector’s.

It is a joint initiative by all of us working on the same direction. We are a big supporter of Go Negosyo’s Project ARK because clearly it is not about the tradeoff between life and livelihood but it’s trying to address both because one cannot exist without the other,” he said. (PR)