Community sets up "mini factory" on the Costa Blanca, supplying hospitals across Spain with vital health supplies

From a small workshop in Alfaz del Pi, Alicante, 1,800 protective screens for health use are produced daily and are being distributed to hospitals and health centres in the area and throughout Spain.

The concept of businessmen from the Marina Baixa region: Antonio Alcaraz, Toni Bru, Juan Ronda and Daniel Junquera keen to help during the COVID-19 crisis, the initiative is supported by the ‘Business Meetings’ group and manufactures.
Mayor of l’Alfàs del Pi, Vicente Arques, visited the workshop in the middle of the production process and expressed his pride “for the initiative, capacity, generosity and talent” of this group of businessmen from the municipality and neighbouring towns.
The scheme is supported by the group ‘Encuentros Empresariales’, a non-profit business association based in Altea, but covering other Spanish towns, and is made up of almost 100 members, who manufacture, in addition to these protective screens in l’Alfàs, plastic coats, accessories for respirators and protective material for hospitals and health establishments.
Businessman Antonio Alcaraz, said: “Today, (Friday, April 3) 5,000 masks and 1,500 screens were delivered to Hospital Clínico San Carlos in Madrid”.
The distribution includes hospitals, health centres, elderly people’s homes, police stations and pharmacies in Madrid, Catalonia, Murcia, Andalusia and throughout Spain. And of course, the region and province. “In fact, this week we delivered masks to all the nursing homes in Alicante,” said Alcaraz.
Another link in this chain of solidarity, is Elda Lodi shoe company, which with 90 employees, manufactures 10,000 masks per week, with the support of another 1,000 individuals who stitch from their homes every week.
Part of the same chain is the 200 gowns a day produced in Altea. As are the pieces that have been successfully tested by the IMED Levante Hospital in Benidorm, also produced by this group of businessmen with 3D printers, which allows them to double the capacity of the respirators allowing them to attend to two patients at the same time.
The aim of this “chain of solidarity” is to expand the resources available for patient care amid the coronavirus pandemic. Thanks also go to associations, groups and individuals, and “many anonymous people”, in the Marina Baixa.