JAKARTA – Her friends who worked in hospitals cried, and Indonesian businesswoman Maryati Dimursi listened: They did not have the protective gear they needed to treat patients suspected of having COVID-19.
Some had resorted to wearing plastic raincoats. She listened, and then she acted. She asked her friends about what might be done -- what kinds of protective clothing might do the job, what materials would be needed to make them. “One of them sent me the hazmat suit so I can make a prototype from it,” Dimursi said.
Now, Dimursi has designed such a suit, and she aims to make hundreds of them and provide them to hospitals for free. She went door-to-door looking for partners in Depok, the West Java city where she runs her merchandising