CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A Charlotte doctor has started a nonprofit to provide protective masks for healthcare workers in our area. The nonprofit is called ‘Help Mask a Hero.'
“The mask I have on I’ve been using every day for about a week,” Dr. LaKesha Legree said. “You can see I’ve already snapped the bottom part of it. I’m relying just on the top part so it makes it difficult for me to have a tight seal on my face.”
Dr. Legree says healthcare professionals like herself desperately need more N95 face masks.
“I am going in that room knowing that I am going to definitely contract the disorder if that patient is positive,” she said. “That’s what not having an N95 mask means.”
She says it’s devastating, the desire to help pitted against the fear of becoming infected.
“It’s hard for us to uphold our oath of taking care of the population without being confident that we are keeping ourselves safe,” she said. “We have an obligation to our patients but we also have an obligation to our children, our families.”
Because of this, Dr. Legree help launch “help mask a hero,” a nonprofit that will collect and provide masks for healthcare workers. She says donations and sponsors are urgently needed, particularly here in the Carolinas.
“Currently there’s a price gouge on masks which is another issue,” she said. “Masks usually cost about $.50 or so to make. For my staff, for 10 masks I paid $200."
If you can help, Dr. Legree says they need it. Desperately.
And if you can’t afford to donate, she still has this plea: “Stay at home,” she urged. “The more we stay home the faster we can contain the spread and the more will be able to control the number of death counts.”
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