Over 200 healthcare professionals and health managers from the Philippines medical community participated in a specially organized webinar by Alibaba Health and the Global MediXchange for Combating COVID-19 (GMCC), first established by the Jack Ma Foundation and Alibaba Foundation in March.

Joined by their counterparts in China, the participants exchanged knowledge and experience in managing the COVID-19 virus effectively, surfacing many valuable insights and considerations towards the fight against COVID-19 in the Philippines.

The initiative is part of the wider mission by the GMCC, with the support of Alibaba Health and Alibaba Cloud, to continuously aggregate collective successes and learnings of medical workers on the frontlines through online discussions, videos and webinars, and best practices in the form of epidemic management and treatment handbooks.

The session, held yesterday, was attended by Officials, Program Managers and other Technical Staff of the Department of Health (DOH) Central Office, DOH Centers for Health Development, DOH Retained and Teaching Hospitals; and Municipal Health Officers, Provincial Health Officers of the Local Government Units and a multi-disciplinary team from Zhejiang Provincial People’s Hospital (ZJPPH) including doctors from the medical administration department, nursing department, hospital infection management department, international cooperation department, radiology department, intensive care unit, infectious diseases department,, clinical laboratory center, health management center, orthopedics department, psychiatry department and radiology department.

The participants discussed at length how best to manage the pandemic, drawing from ZJPPH’s experiences in triaging, testing, treating and tracing cases effectively, while protecting frontline employees and other patients from the virus. Participants also exchanged thoughts on how best to guide the public in seeking treatment and virus containment methods, from contact tracing and testing to planning and managing purpose-built isolation facilities for patients with mild symptoms.

“We are still in the middle of the fight with the COVID-19 pandemic situation in the Philippines and we are thankful to the Foundations for organizing this exchange so we can learn from your experience. Hearing about the actions taken, how you sustained the efforts and managed your resources we can contextualize it to the situation in the Philippines to better protect our people,” said Dr. Pretchell P. Tolentino, MCHM Division Chief, Learning and Development Division – Health Human Resource Development Bureau, Department of Health.

To date, more than 4,000 healthcare workers around the world have participated in the webinars organized by the GMCC program, including 200 from the Philippines. Similar webinars have been held with thousands of infectious disease control and medical professionals from Rwanda, Ethiopia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and Indonesia.

“This fight against COVID-19 is a global one, and we cannot and will not rest until it is eradicated or effectively mitigated worldwide. Through GMCC we hope to continue to support our collective efforts against the pandemic by serving as a free and open exchange platform for medical professionals to group together and strategize success,” said Li Ma, Senior Vice President of Alibaba Health.

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