Samaritan’s Purse has opened a 68-bed Emergency Field Hospital in New York’s Central Park today to provide critical care for people seriously ill with the coronavirus.
“This is what Samaritan’s Purse does—we respond in the middle of crises to help people in Jesus’ Name.”
A 72-member Disaster Assistance Response Team, including doctors, nurses, and other healthcare specialists, is on the ground working to help save lives. We will soon be receiving COVID-19 patients from our partner in the city, Mount Sinai Health System.
“People are dying from the coronavirus, hospitals are out of beds, and the medical staff are overwhelmed,” said Franklin Graham, president of Samaritan’s Purse. “We are deploying our Emergency Field Hospital to New York to help carry this burden.
This is what Samaritan’s Purse does—we respond in the middle of crises to help people in Jesus’ Name. Please pray for our teams and for everyone around the world affected by the virus.”
We have been running a similar medical facility outside of Milan, Italy, since March 20. The 14-tent unit is set up adjacent to the Cremona Hospital in order to treat an overflow of coronavirus patients. Our DC-8 aircraft made two airlifts to Italy in order to deliver the hospital, 20 tons of supplies, and a large Disaster Assistance Response Team.
When we arrived, our team was told that with the entire country of Italy facing a daunting number of coronavirus cases, Cremona itself felt abandoned in the midst of it all. When local health authorities found out we were coming, they told Suter that they felt like their prayers had been answered. The Lombardy region has so far reported over 3,400 deaths related to the novel coronavirus, well more than half of Italy’s grim total.
Dozens of disaster relief specialists, including doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel, will be serving in Jesus’ Name in both the United Sates and Italy to bring comfort and the hope of Christ to hurting people.
Samaritan’s Purse staff are working on the front lines in two of the worst affected areas in the world. New York City, the epicenter of the U.S. outbreak, has been staggered. Hundreds are dying daily in the city from the virus, and tens of thousands of cases have been reported across its five boroughs. As a nation, the United States now has the highest number of active COVID-19 cases in the world, with a total surpassing 170,000.
The city of Cremona, in northern Italy’s Lombardy region, is at the heart of the pandemic in Europe. The death toll across Italy is more than 12,000—the largest grim total for any nation in the world.
Cremona Hospital has been forced to suspend all medical care, except for maternity and pediatrics, due to the overwhelming numbers of people suffering from this terrible disease.
Please pray for our medical teams serving in New York City and Cremona and for the patients who will be treated at both of our facilities. Pray for those sick with this coronavirus and their families around the world, and that this pandemic will soon come to an end.
Our infectious disease experts are working in coordination with the World Health Organization and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to ensure the teams are taking necessary precautions.
Christian Healthcare Workers: If you are a licensed, U.S. medical professional and interested in serving on our COVID-19 response, you can sign up at SPvolunteer.org.
In addition to our two respiratory care units, Samaritan’s Purse has also responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by donating personal protective equipment. In March, we sent more than 50,000 face masks to hospitals in North Carolina, including 10,000 to UNC Health.
Samaritan’s Purse stands ready to respond to a medical crisis anywhere in the world. We have deployed our Emergency Field Hospital in the aftermath of disasters in Ecuador, Mozambique, and the Bahamas. During the battle to liberate Mosul from ISIS terror, we set up our mobile medical facility on the Plains of Nineveh in Iraq. We have operated Ebola Treatment Centers in both Liberia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Our medical teams also mounted significant deployments in Bangladesh to care for people with diphtheria and in Haiti during a cholera epidemic following Hurricane Matthew. Learn more about Samaritan’s Purse and how you can help support their work here.
