As communities around the globe continue to fight the spread of COVID-19, we also know that there is an increase in people coping with exacerbated challenges, including limited healthcare access and housing, food insecurity and domestic violence. Acknowledging these incremental challenges, BD and the BD Foundation have further expanded our philanthropic and product donation response to the pandemic, totaling $2.5 million to date.

We are working with trusted non-profit partners that are “on the ground,” directly serving some of the world’s most vulnerable people and places to determine where our investments can have the greatest impact. Here are some of our most recent philanthropic investments that are supporting some of the communities most deeply affected by COVID-19. 

• In multiple African nations, the combination of poverty, conflict and COVID-19 are overwhelming already weak social support systems. The pandemic continues to have a particularly devastating impact on crowded refugee camps and urban slums, where individuals lack the most basic of protections against the spread of the virus, such as clean water and soap.
  
  Our non-profit partners, including Americares, AMREF, Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, Doctors with Africa CUAMM, International Health Partners, Ubuntu Pathways,  Last Mile Health and UNICEF USA, are focusing the majority of BD’s philanthropic funding on delivering life-saving medical supplies and psychosocial support services to at-risk families in Africa; as well as training to equip frontline and community health workers on best practices for pandemic response.
  
  In Malawi, the Royal College of Surgeons is leveraging BD philanthropic funding to ensure a leading pediatric hospital in the region is prepared to safely perform urgent surgeries, while taking necessary precautions to contain the spread of COVID-19. 
   
• In Colombia, our funding to IsraAid is being used to provide medical supplies and access to clean water in refugee camps, where refugees are at high-risk of contracting COVID-19 due to the lack of sanitation infrastructure and close living quarters.
  
  In both Colombia and Guatemala, IsraAid is helping to provide protective gear, online education and psychosocial support to health care professionals.
   
• In Italy, Doctors with Africa CUAMM leveraged our investments to provide ventilators to hospital intensive care units that needed additional equipment to serve patients. 
   
• In Spain and the U.K., BD donated Arctic Sun^TM targeted temperature management systems and ArcticGel^TM pads to hospitals hard hit by COVID-19, to help regulate the high temperatures of intensive care unit patients who are fighting the virus.
   
• In New York and Chicago, two U.S. cities hit hardest by COVID-19, Heart to Heart International (HHI) leveraged BD funding to deploy medical volunteers to help with hospital staffing shortages. With BD funds, HHI is also providing services to address wellness, behavioral, health (and mental health) challenges, as well as medical evaluations and medication management services to homeless patients who test positive for COVID-19, but do not have a place to quarantine.
   
• In New Jersey, where BD global headquarters is located, we provided funding to several longstanding non-profit partners, including Bergen Volunteer Medical Initiative, the Center for Hope and Safety, CUMAC, Eva’s Village, Family Promise of Bergen County and Zufall Health, to help ensure community members have access to food, shelter, protection from domestic violence and basic healthcare services; as well as job and skills training.
  
  BD has also provided financial support to the New Jersey Pandemic Relief Fund, which is focused on stopping the spread of COVID-19, supporting the healthcare community, providing help for the vulnerable, and rebuilding local communities.  

In March 2020, BD made initial philanthropic investments of cash and product to Project HOPE and the Wuhan Red Cross to help support healthcare systems in China strained by COVID-19 .

Over the course of the year, BD committed additional  funding to support the global COVID-19 response efforts of Direct Relief, International Medical Corps, Americares, the CDC Foundation, and the World Health Organization-United Nations Foundation’s COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund. The BD Foundation made a $750,000 donation to the BD Associate Relief Fund, which issued grants to more than 1,300 BD associates impacted by short-term, COVID-19-related furloughs.