The first requests for lab equipment came from the regional general practice centers (HaROP Oost-Brabant), who contacted Carmen van Vilsteren, director of TU/e’s Strategic Area Health, says Moniek de Liefde-Van Beest, who was involved in the initiative as acting managing director of the department of Biomedical Engineering. “She was approached by health care workers with this request. Lab coats, among other things, were in demand. We still had 105 newly washed coats hanging in Gemini, and we found 92 more in Helix.”

These coats are very useful to medical caregivers at the moment, she explains. “They were made with the specific purpose of working with biological material, such as bacteria and viruses. We use them in our laboratories for that purpose as well. You can wash them daily at sixty degrees, so that they are free of viruses the next day. And unlike the white coats general practitioners often wear, they have long sleeves and cuffs that close well.”

Safety glasses

Not long after that followed a request from the Safety Region Zuidoost Brabant for safety glasses and laboratory gloves, says De Liefde - Van Beest. “We heard about this via NanoLab@TU/e, which also supplies disposable gloves and overalls. We searched our laboratories and found one hundred boxes of gloves in Gemini, each containing one hundred gloves, and about four hundred more boxes in different sizes in Helix. In addition, we donated between fifty and a hundred of the safety glasses normally used during practical classes.”

The next request, again from the Safety Region, was for disinfectants and came via Kitty Nijmeijer, professor at the department of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry. People from TU/e personally went to the Red Cross earlier this week to donate no fewer than sixteen hundred liters of ethanol and a few hundred liters of isopropanol. “We have all the permits for such a transport, so that was the logical thing to do.”

Crisis situation

A quick calculation shows that the relief supplies represent a value of nearly ten thousand euros. The general practitioners have said that in principle, the lab coats will be returned to TU/e once they are no longer needed, but De Liefde-Van Beest doesn’t really count on that. “It would be great if we got them back, but the most important thing is that we can make a small contribution in the current crisis situation in this way.”