Welcome to Good News Daily. Today is Mon Mar 10 2025
As South Africans rally to fight the Covid-19 pandemic, two of the country’s foremost organisations have formed a partnership to leverage skills and resources to help stem the tide of one of the largest pandemics in recent history.
International waste management company Averda and Gift of the Givers have announced a strategic partnership to provide much-needed medical waste management services to Gift of the Givers’ mobile testing stations across the country free of charge.
This will be for the duration of the current lockdown period.
This partnership aims to provide crucial support to health care facilities that are beginning to be stretched to capacity.
Gift of the Givers founder Dr Imtiaz Sooliman believes providing assistance to the government and to our society’s most vulnerable sets an example to other NGOs to actively participate in the fight against the pandemic.
“Our mobile testing station initiative will assist government in meeting the diagnostic demands of Covid-19 by providing NICD [National Institute for Communicable Diseases] approved lab testing at discounted rates,” he says.
We are proud to be working with Averda, who have taken the lead in providing critical services to fill resource gaps that would have detrimental effects on the most vulnerable communities, if not addressed
Dr Imtiaz Sooliman
The large quantity of infected medical waste generated by testing for the highly contagious virus means efficient management of high-risk healthcare isolation waste and disposal becomes critical.
Averda will manage the disposal of contaminated waste from the mobile Covid-19 testing stations on a pro bono basis.
“Averda will supply waste containers to all testing stations, and provide training and skills development on waste storage and disposal to staff at these testing stations, enabling the safety and protection of health care workers.” says Averda CEO Malek Sukkar.
Sukkar believes the coronavirus pandemic constitutes an unprecedented challenge for of humanity, and that meeting and overcoming this challenge involves breaking down invisible barriers between public and private, commercial and NGO, businesses and people.
“This virus threatens all of us and so we must all act as one. Averda has the resource and the skill set to remove and manage waste safely, protecting hygiene standards, which is key to fighting the virus.”
“We are ready to serve, and we are in active and productive discussions about how we can best do so.”
