Chinese face masks for Italian regions

On 25 March, the China Friendship Foundation for Peace and Development approached ORU Fogar offering the possibility of sending masks to the Italian regions to combat the coronavirus and establish a partnership. Italy, at the time, was experiencing the worst moment of the pandemic. In fact, the largest number of deaths from COVID-19 in the country was on 27 March, 919 people died. 

In a few days it was realized that a donation from the county of Xingwen in the province of Sichuan would be sent to the regions of Tuscany and Sicily. There was an exchange of messages between Italians and Chinese, with the participation of the president of Tuscany and that of Sicily, Enrico Rosi and Sebastiano Musumeci. Thus, 20,000 FFP2 and FFP3 masks were sent from China to the Hospital de Massa in Tuscany and 20,000 masks to the Hospital de Catania in Sicily.

The pandemic situation, with closed flights and closed borders, made it extremely difficult to send the donation. The masks were flown to the Czech Republic and then to Italy by land.

This collaboration was made possible by the joint work carried out in recent years by ORU Fogar and the Chinese Peace and Development Organization, the China Friendship Foundation for Peace and Development, which culminated in the signing of an agreement on 5 and 6 September 2019 in Shenzhen. This agreement establishes a framework for cooperation between ORU Fogar and the Chinese provinces, involving exchanges of experience and the signing of agreements on governance, climate change, economic, urban and territorial development, and communication in the youth field.