From left, Eesha and Uma Kaushik, with Kaylee Waage and Ruby Zhao, their father’s colleagues, with personal protective equipment ready for delivery.
Photo: Neeraj KaushikNeeraj Kaushik, a doctor at St. Francis Hospital on Long Island, came home to his family recently with a paper bag filled with a single set of protective equipment for a week of work with coronavirus patients.
Dr. Kaushik’s teenage daughters didn’t think it was enough.
“I’m the sole breadwinner in the family. If I were to fall severely sick or worse, obviously that’s a concern,” he said.
The girls—Eesha, 14 years old, and Uma, 17—launched a campaign that has grown far beyond helping their father, raising nearly $30,000 and donating masks, gowns, face shields and hand sanitizer to hospitals, long-term care facilities and other sites across the New York City area.
Hospitals, cities and state governments have struggled to acquire enough personal protective equipment, or PPE, for health-care workers deluged with patients suffering from Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Private citizens like Eesha and Uma have helped fill the void, often proving more nimble than professional procurement departments.
Emergency-room staff at St. Francis Hospital with a delivery of PPE.
The girls started with a goal of raising $10,000. They put the word out through Instagram, Facebook, an email sent out by their school principal and eventually ‘Thank you’ messages posted online by people they had helped.
Dr. Kaushik’s daughters declined to get into too many details about their donors, who they said have asked for anonymity in many cases. Some of their neighbors in Woodbury in Nassau County have come forward with supplies from their own stockpiles.
“It’s definitely been very shocking to see those people who email us and say, ‘I have 100 N-95 masks in my basement,’” said Uma, referring to masks that are highly sought after by health-care workers because they block 95% of very small airborne particles.
Let’s Craft, a Long Island business that serves ambitious amateur crafters—and opened just days before the pandemic—has used its equipment to help make face shields for the girls to distribute.
Health-care workers reacted to applause at Kings County Hospital Center in Brooklyn on April 24. The Kaushik sisters made a donation there earlier in the month.
Photo: Mark Lennihan/Associated Press“We are doing everything we can to keep our doctors, nurses, and entire staff protected during this trying time and appreciate everything people are doing to help, including members of our St. Francis family,” said Dr. Charles Lucore, president of St. Francis Hospital.
John Mathew, medical director of the emergency department at St. Joseph Hospital in Nassau County, said he heard about Uma and Eesha from another physician and contacted them for help recently as his facility ran low on gear. He had to make a Home Depot run to buy ponchos for his staff when the hospital was in danger of running out of gowns.
The girls donated 975 isolation gowns, 250 sets of coveralls and 350 masks.
Thanks in part to donations from the community, infection rates of St. Joseph’s staff have been comparable to or lower than the general population’s, according to Dr. Mathew.
“It is a little bit of a war zone in the hospital, but it does help when we have help,” he said.
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The Kaushik sisters were among the private groups that donated thousands of masks and hundreds of gowns to the Cerebral Palsy Association of Nassau County, a Long Island operator of long-term care facilities for disabled residents. Its executive director, Bob McGuire, said 37 of 46 residents have tested positive for Covid-19 and seven have died.
He said staff had to volunteer to bring their sleeping bags and toothbrushes and move in full time because their facilities were under quarantine—though they lacked basic protective equipment and had to dress in garbage bags instead of gowns.
“The biggest challenge to us immediately was PPE, three letters that I didn’t know existed together” until recently, said Mr. McGuire.
Private efforts have helped cut red tape around getting health care workers the equipment they need, said Kristin Mink, co-founder of Masks for America, which has distributed 100,000 masks to hospitals around the country since it was started about a month ago by Bob Bland, a fashion designer and founder of Manufacture New York. She said doctors and nurses at many hospitals are allowed to bring their own PPE to work without going through formal hospital channels.
Along the way, the Kaushik girls have found reasons to keep going. They know a supply-chain manager at a Brooklyn hospital who has become critically ill with Covid-19; his illness made them more determined to help others like him. The responses from health care workers strengthens their resolve to deliver more gear.
“It’s like seeing water for the first time in 30 days. It’s like that to them. It’s so scarce,” said Eesha. “They’re on the edge of tears, they’re so grateful for this.”
Write to Laura Kusisto at laura.kusisto@wsj.com
Corrections & Amplifications
An earlier version of this article misspelled the first name of Masks for America co-founder Kristin Mink as Kirstin. (Corrected on May 5, 2020)
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