“Unfortunately, we couldn’t be around to help out ourselves,” said Usemma Khan, FCRH ’21, director-elect of FUEMS. “But we are so grateful that we have these [supplies]and instead of keeping these in here, we’re able to give them out to people who can actually use them.” 

When Fordham closed its residential halls in late March, many FUEMS members moved back home. But there was one way they could still help out their local community, said Khan. 

On the night of March 29, members of FUEMS met on Zoom and agreed to give their supplies to those in dire need. Their chief-elect, Li Yang Wei, FCRH ’21, coordinated with their medical director Mark Estrallado, FCRH ’09, an emergency medicine physician at St. Barnabas, to create an inventory of needed supplies at the hospital. The next day, two FUEMS members who live near the Rose Hill campus — Wei and Adam Rosen, FCRH ’20 — visited the FUEMS supply room and gathered equipment, with permission from Fordham Public Safety. On March 31, St. Barnabas Hospital picked up the supplies, said Khan. 

In total, FUEMS donated 158 non-rebreather masks, 28 N95 respirator masks, 87 nasal cannulas, 58 nebulizers, 37 bag valve masks, 31 vent masks, 18 pairs of gloves, 15 goggles, 10 continuous positive airway pressure devices, seven oxygen supply tubings, six infection control kits, six packs of albuterol, five surgical face masks, and four personal isolation kits, said Khan. This adds to the list of approximately 35,000 medical supplies recently donated from Fordham to health care workers on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“A lot of hospitals are running short on all of these supplies because of the overload of patients coming in,” Khan said. “We can help at least a little bit.”