Combating Covid-19: Sharjah furniture manufacturer produces 150 hospital gowns per day free of cost

About 17 workers from the company's factory are producing close to 150 gowns per day.

In a bid to support the UAE's battle against Covid-19, a Sharjah-based furniture manufacturing company is now producing 150 protective garments per day. These are provided for frontline healthcare workers in the UAE free of cost.
Indian national Lasith Kayakkal, one of the co-owners of Deena Furniture Factory, along with his partners, Abdul Hamid Kornassi and Anna Hida, have dedicated a section of their factory to manufacture protective gowns for healthcare workers.
About 17 workers from the company's factory are producing close to 150 gowns per day, Kayakkal told Khaleej Times. Once complete, the gowns undergo a seven-day sterilisation process, and only then do the medical staff use it in their hospitals.
He explained: "We have been manufacturing these gowns for the past 10 days. The cloth for these gowns is being supplied by a hospital we work in partnership with." The company only manufactures gowns for nurses, cleaning staff and other hospital staff.
"In intensive care units, the doctors wear the medical-grade disposable gowns. However, in other parts of the hospitals, they can use our gowns," said Kayakkal. His partner Kornassi said the need for such gowns and other personal protection equipment is presently high in hospitals across the world. "However, because the medical-grade ones are disposable and have high-cost, it is not cost-effective to give it to all the staff," he added.
The company hopes to partner with the Emirates Red Crescent to continue manufacturing these gowns on a larger scale to help the medical community.
The furniture factory is situated in Emirates Industrial City in Sharjah, and once batches of the gowns are completed, hospital staff collect it directly from the factory.
"Our workers live near the factory and we have been working from 8am to 10pm to produce these gowns. Our workers took great enthusiasm in manufacturing these gowns as well," the businessmen explained.
In light of the ongoing crisis, the company has also recently procured government approvals for security guards, sterilisation and cleaning services.
dhanusha@khaleejtimes.com