Nola Hartman has been keeping track of how many masks she's made to donate. It takes her about ten minutes to produce one.
(Zach Herndon)
A shortage of medical supplies is making the coronavirus crisis worse. There aren’t enough gloves, gowns and face masks.
Hospitals and medical facilities throughout the country are turning to the public for help, saying do-it-yourself face masks are better than nothing.
On WFIU’s Noon Edition earlier this month, IU Health’s South Central Region Chief Medical Officer Dan Handel encouraged the community to start making masks.
In Bloomington, volunteers are answering the call and making masks to donate.
“A week ago Sunday I got a call from a friend who said, 'My mother is a pediatrician in southern Indiana and she needs masks, can you help?' And since then we’re at 119 volunteers now,” says quilter Nola Hartman. “The first week it was pretty much just me and things were kind of quiet and then demand just exploded. And that’s when I went online and made a plea for help.”
WATCH: HOW TO MAKE A DIY RESUABLE FABRIC FACE MASK
Kelly Clark came on board too. She’s in charge of all the organizational details: registering volunteers, taking them supplies, picking up finished masks, washing and sorting them and delivering them to folks who have placed orders.
“In the medical world when you’re doing procedures like surgeries and stuff like that there are clean procedures," Clark says. "And obviously I cannot come close to duplicating true surgery clean procedures, but I have enough knowledge of how they work that I can handle masks as cleanly as can be expected and reduce the risk of contamination."
The quality of these masks isn’t as good as the protective N95 respirator masks that federal officials have always advised hospital workers to use. But that’s not who Clark says these are really intended for. Only the best masks are channeled to hospitals and nursing homes. She says the homemade masks help add to the overall supply of masks which is important.
“I know that these masks are desperately needed by our second-line health care responders, largely to free up supply for our frontline health care providers of the medical grade protective equipment,” Clark says.
Last week the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention quietly updated its guidance, saying hospitals that run low on surgical masks should consider ways to reuse them or to use them through an entire shift. And if hospitals run out out, the CDC said, scarfs or bandanas could be used ”as a last resort,” though some health officials warned cloth masks might not work.
It takes Nola about seven minutes to make each mask.
She irons it, sews in pleats, puts in a pipe cleaner for the nose, and elastic so it fits around the ears.
“You can see that the pipe cleaner makes it form around my nose," she says as she tries on one of the masks to demonstrate. “And the pleats make it come down around your face and fit well.”
Hartman doesn’t know how many she’s made, but even with her work and what the team of volunteers is doing, they can’t keep up with orders.
"My goal today is to get 50 more of these into bags for Middleway House and then 20 more for their volunteers,” says Clark. “And then they’ll be ready to drop off."
Nola and Kelly are working at least 12-hour days and they say they’ll continue doing it as long as there’s a demand.
"I love to sew and that is my super power and I believe in using super powers for good," Nola says. "So when I saw a need, I was really happy to find something that I could do to help."
