Extending a helping hand to the UAE’s efforts to fight coronavirus (COVID-19), VPS Healthcare, an Abu Dhabi-based healthcare provider, has set up a new factory in Khalifa Industrial Zone Abu Dhabi (Kizad) to manufacturing hand sanitisers and thousands of masks.
VPS Healthcare’s Ziva, a hygiene and healthcare products manufacturing company based in Dubai, has set up an additional manufacturing plant at Kizad to boost the production of hygiene products.
The plant was expeditiously set up to meet the soaring demand for face masks, wall-mounted sanitisers, hand sanitisers and wipes in the market.
The facility in Kizad is in addition to Ziva’s already existing facilities in Sharjah and Dubai’s Jebel Ali, which manufacture protective equipment. The company is producing over 50,000 pieces of face masks and 100,000 units of hand sanitisers daily now.
The products manufactured at the plant will be supplied to various private and public entities.
Speaking on this, VPS Healthcare chairman and managing director Dr Shamsheer Vayalil said that it is their responsibility to offer all possible support and services to the nation, which is relentlessly fighting to contain the viral infection.
“The UAE Government and Ministry of Health have been engaged in a herculean task. The entire government machinery is doing a commendable job in its effort to abate the viral infection and bring it under control,” he added.
Demand for masks and sanitisers has surged across the UAE, with retailers and chemists reporting they had run out of protective gear when the first confirmed case of the coronavirus was announced in the country in January.
The company had earlier donated Dh1 million worth of disinfection products, gloves, sanitiser, masks and vitamin tablets to the Ministry of Education.
Further, VPS Healthcare is collaborating on a clinical trial of oral Nafamostat as a treatment for Covid-19, according to a news report.
It will be partnering with California-based Ensysce Biosciences and scientists at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute.
“Finding a safe and effective treatment is a pressing health priority,” said Dr Vayalil.
