Jack Ma Foundation, Alibaba arm donate Covid-19 medical supplies to India

The Jack Ma Foundation and Alibaba Foundation have donated medical supplies such as Covid-19 testing kits and face masks to India, along with six other countries. Both were set up by Jack Ma, founder of Chinese ecommerce behemoth Alibaba Group.

Azerbaijan, Bhutan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam also received the medical supplies, taking the total recipient Asian countries to 23, according to a statement.

The first batch of medical supplies for India arrived in New Delhi on Saturday night, it said. It was handed over to Neel Kamal Singh, deputy secretary of the Indian Red Cross Society, it added.

Collectively, the foundations have donated a total of 7.4 million face masks, 4,85,000 Covid-19 test kits and 1,00,000 sets of protective clothing, along with other medical equipment, the company said. Of that, 1.7 million face masks and 1,65,000 test kits were sent to the aforementioned seven countries, the company added.

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“The Indian Red Cross has mobilised the first tranche of supplies consisting of face masks, protective body suits and essential medical equipment,” RK Jain, secretary general, Indian Red Cross, said.

Apart from Asia, the foundations have also sourced and delivered medical supplies to countries across North America, Latin America, Europe and Africa.

“We are one with the global community in the intense battle to protect all families against Covid-19. We are committed to doing everything we can to make a difference, most importantly by sourcing these supplies and overcoming logistical challenges to get the medical supplies to where they are needed as fast as we can,” The Jack Ma Foundation said in a statement.

Recently, Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of Alibaba, rolled out artificial intelligence and cloud-based technology solutions to fight against the Covid-19 pandemic. The cloud-native solutions stem from joint efforts of Alibaba Cloud experts and scientists from research and development institute Alibaba DAMO Academy, as well as the technical team from communication platform DingTalk.

So far, the Covid-19 pandemic has claimed 27 lives in the country, with at least 1,139 positive cases.