Danny K, Kabelo Mabalane Shout4Masks: Celebs work with Discovery to deliver PPE

In South Africa, many hospitals struggle to procure sufficient medical equipment – including basics such as face masks and hand sanitisers. Since the start of the pandemic, we have seen myriad organisations and good hearted individuals step up to the plate, doing what they can to assist the brave medical practitioners on the front line. One such organisation is Shout4Masks. Created by South African musicians Danny K and Kabelo Mabalane, the dynamic duo – together with Discovery Vitality – have set out to provide masks to those who are really in need of protection, such as doctors, nurses and other medical practitioners who work in ill-equipped healthcare facilities – Jarryd Neves.Well, the Covid pandemic may seem to be on the decline in South Africa, but that doesn't mean that we can't protect or shouldn't be protecting ourselves. There's an initiative called Shout4Masks, which was put together by celebrities Danny K and Kabelo Mabalane. Danny is with us. Also have in this discussion today is James Vos, who's the head of Vitality Strategic Programmes. Danny, a number of celebrities have got involved in the pandemic and it's fantastic to see that you give of your time and leverage your personalities into supporting all of this. What got Shout4Masks started and why in that direction? .___STEADY_PAYWALL___.As an NGO that's been around for the better part of a decade, we began harnessing the power of celebrity and influence, spurred on by movements like We Are the World by USA for Africa – that were benchmarks to me personally – in using celebrity currency in the right way. Over the years, whether it was a plea for education and building libraries or was supporting the police in trying to reduce crime, we've always kept our ear to the ground and tried to help in some small way wherever we could. So when Covid-19 erupted in South Africa, it just came very naturally to say, "Okay, we want to try and assist. What is the best way to assist? Who is best to partner with?" All of these pieces came together for us in the period of about a week, and all of a sudden Shout4Masks was launched..Why Shout4Masks? Why masks in particular?.Most of the world was shocked by Covid-19. Not really understanding it, knowing where to begin, how best to assist etc. Masks and PPE were the first global reaction on how we could start to protect ourselves. The heroes on the frontline – doctors and nurses – were under-resourced with masks and PPE. So how did we make an effort? Well, we thought "let's get the doctors and nurses that are really being exposed to the virus, the necessary protection." Part of that solution was finding a good supplier who would allow the public to purchase these masks at 0% markup. So we needed cost pricing on PPE, in order for the public to come in and have their money go as far as possible. That way, we could get as many masks with as little money ,spreading as many masks as we could across the country. .What's the support been like from the public? .It's been absolutely incredible, both from the public and corporate South Africa. The old adage of 'build it and they will come' really rang true with regards to this website. So in 2/3 days, we had a website up. We had packs of around seven or eight masks for R100 that the public could step in and buy or donate. Then corporate South Africa jumped on board. In the period of a month, we had raised in excess of R3/R4-million, which was totally amazing to us. We are continuing to fundraise, and now with great corporates like Discovery assisting us, we think as long as this pandemic is around, we'll be there in some small way to lend a hand..Looking at your website and elsewhere, you've already provided masks to more than a baker's dozen of hospitals around the country. What's the update? .So now we're actually flying masks in private charters, to rural clinics around the country. We'll increase that number probably twofold by just getting to all these areas that, for whatever reason, our government is unable to service. The big hospitals are certainly part of our agenda. But the little guys that are often overlooked, we feel we need to assist, which is really rewarding. So as I said, we are flying planes around the country with boxes of masks. .James Vos, you at Discovery – with your Vitality program and millions of members – have many worthy causes to choose from. Why Shout4Masks? .I think it's a cause that's very close to our hearts at Discovery, supporting healthcare workers – who are major stakeholders of ours. But as Danny says, they really are the heroes on the frontline and we want to do everything we can to support them. Vitality MoveToGive allows our members to make a difference, so they can choose to spend their rewards on a charitable cause – such as a Shout4Masks – instead of redeeming personal rewards for themselves. The power of celebrity that Danny and Kabelo bring really fits nicely with how MoveToGive works and providing a platform for our members to get involved and support this incredibly valuable cause. .How involved have they become? .Very involved. I'm always amazed to see the statistics of how our members get involved, particularly in these Covid times. From late March to early June, the number of members donating to the various causes of MoveToGive has more than doubled. We've seen an overwhelming response. This is people giving up rewards – coffee, smoothies or even more valuable things – to go and assist people that they've actually never met. The response from our members has been truly overwhelming..Read also: Discovery's Dr Geraldine Timothy: masks, dud Covid-19 tests, vaccine to save us – and more.Danny, from your perspective, what I like – and I guess many others who come across Shout4Masks for the first time – is that you've broken it down. From R100 upwards, you can make a contribution which is tangible. You know how many marks are going to healthcare workers. Where did that idea come from? .We needed to show real value and keep it really simple. There was huge inflation in mask pricing when Covid broke, and that to us was untenable. We couldn't have a situation where just one mask was R50 for a medical grade KN95 mask. The first thing we needed to do was find a supplier that's going to get us masks directly from factories and have a true cost price benefit on those masks and then build a pack. So we need surgical masks and then a higher-spec mask like a KN95 or a FFP2 (both are used in hospitals around the country.) Then we said, let's build a pack. Make it R100, for example, and then allow corporate South Africa – if they wanted – to buy silver, gold or platinum packages. Offer them Section 18A tax incentives on that money. In that way, we hit the man and woman in the street and we got corporate South Africa to say "look, your money actually is turning into a physical count of masks. We'll handle all the logistics. We'll get them to the hospitals." As James said, you can do this through your points on the app or simply by making a contribution on our website. It's really easy. I think a lot of people felt very helpless. It was overwhelming. This was just a really simple call to action and I think it connected with people. .James, one of the big problems for corporates endorsing celebrities is that things might go wrong. Why were you comfortable with Danny K and Kabelo being the guys you were prepared to align with? .As Danny said, there's a long history of working on excellent causes. There's a very strong brand alignment with what Danny and Kabelo stand for and what we're trying to do as Discovery. More than that, the cause itself is something that's incredibly important. Since the campaign started, Discovery members have raised over 15,000 surgical masks and over 1000 of the higher-spec masks. We think that since our members have been so generous in the donating of the masks from the Discovery Fund perspective – which is one of the bodies that funds our CSI initiatives – we're actually going to match all of the masks that our members have donated. We are very happy to get involved. Hopefully that will make an even bigger difference to this cause. .So it's track record and business acumen. You hear that coming through very clearly – something that you don't always associate with celebrities?.It takes a village to do these sorts of things. Even though Kabelo and I are the face of this NGO, we have wonderful stakeholders. Many of them go unsung and uncelebrated. That's quite sad because I get to sit here and talk to you. But you don't hear about the guys who built our website, who did all the creative collateral or any of these wonderful people that sit in our brain trust and help connect us with someone like Adrian Gore. They said, "Send Adrian Gore a cold email and ask him if he wants to get involved in Shout4Masks." I sheepishly did, and here I sit saying we got Discovery on board. It's far bigger than myself. I think we're just used as the mouthpiece, the icing on top of this very complex cake. By no means it's just us. I thank Discovery for taking the chance on Shout4Masks. .What's it like when you visit hospitals? Do you go along and help in the delivery of the masks? .We have been. It was a bit scary at the beginning.There was a lot of uncertainty. I'm sure everyone listening can appreciate how scary those early weeks were. We were trying to organise deliveries and go to hospitals and during that lockdown, you couldn't get in unless you were a patient. It was incredibly difficult, but the hospitals were in such dire need that we were so welcomed when these masks arrived. It was just incredibly rewarding. We were inundated with emails on a daily basis – when Shout4 Masks was launched – from nurses and doctors saying, "We're sitting here scared. We don't have masks." They were as scared as we were, not knowing how this virus was contracted or how deadly it was. There's still a lot of that going on. So it was interesting..Read also: Decoding antibody testing – Why you could have Covid and not know it.It's a very good point you make. This is now our 80th episode of Inside Covid-19. I remember the early days, talking to an intensivist from a hospital in Ekurhuleni and she was saying, "We know that there's a 20% mortality ratio among people like me who work in ICU. But we're still gonna do it. We're still going to get in there." Well, thankfully, that's all been addressed. But the courage of these people, also hearing the courage of the nurses who have to handle Covid patients physically. I guess what you're doing as well is not only giving them a better chance of not becoming a statistic, but also recognising what they're doing for the country. .It's just incredible. Even when I'd been for a Covid test since this began, even the people in these testing labs – that are testing you, that don't know if you're negative or positive – just show enormous courage. It just cannot be said enough, how courageous these people are. What we would do without them is frightening. So for us, it's a no-brainer to try and make an impact in their lives in any way we could..The fact that the active cases today are one-third of what they were at the peak at the end of July – we've also seen the mortalities falling quite significantly, thanks to our health workers and maybe our sunshine and that we coming out of winter at last – why is the Shout4masks campaign still relevant in that context? .It's important that we don't get complacent. Globally, we've seen a re-emergence of Covid infections and the impact that has on hospitals and healthcare workers. We generally have a healthcare system that's under strain in many areas in South Africa. It's incredibly important that our healthcare workers are equipped, not only to deal with the current caseload, but for any future caseload. We don't want to be caught on the back foot. We really need to keep ahead of this thing, less the kind of impact is something that we aren't able to manage as effectively as we have done at the moment..From my side, I think we're looking forward to the day that we completely shut Shout4Masks down. That would be a great day. We certainly do not want it around forever. We'll be shouting for other causes as the years go on and we hope Discovery is there with us. But yes, until it is a thing of the past we'll be there. If we're supplying 1000 masks a month instead of 100,000, we're on the right end of the curve. We thank you, James and the entire Discovery team for helping us. I think the more press publicity after this, the more great corporate giants like Discovery we have in our corner. We can only make more of an impact.

Danny K, Kabelo Mabalane Shout4Masks: Celebs work with Discovery to deliver PPE

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