A 7-year-old boy in Ashburn, Virginia, has gathered thousands of pieces of equipment to donate to an emergency room stretched thin during the coronavirus pandemic.
Zohaib Begg had the idea of going to local hotels to ask for shower caps that medical workers could use as disposable, one-time items for protection.
He ended up finding much more, gathering more than 2,000 shower caps, 3,000 gloves and 900 masks.
“He just started thinking about what else we could come up with,” said his mother Isma Begg. “We never thought hotels would have face masks to donate and gloves to donate.”
The face masks and gloves would normally be used by housekeeping employees who clean up rooms.
“We called area hotels and went around,” said Isma Begg. “They were very generous.”
They gathered supplies at Northern Virginia hotels, including Hyatts and Marriotts, and plan to donate all the items to the emergency room at Inova Fairfax Hospital.
Begg’s son has a personal connection to that hospital.
“He was a patient there,” Begg said. “When he was 3-years-old he was diagnosed with a mass in his stomach and received treatment at Inova Fairfax himself.”
Now, he is working to give back at a time when the hospital is in need of extra protective equipment.
