KUALA LUMPUR, April 6 — UDA Holdings Bhd board member Rosli Dahlan, a former Covid-19 patient, today delivered a RM150,000 donation to Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin to aid in the nation’s fight against the viral outbreak.
Muhyiddin today said that Rosli who is a trustee of NAMA Foundation had personally met him to hand over the private charity foundation’s RM150,000 contribution to Tabung Covid-19.
“I feel proud when a former Covid-19 patient that has been confirmed by the Health Ministry of Malaysia to have recovered is now taking the role of helping victims of that virus,” Muhyiddin wrote on his Facebook page today.
Rosli, a prominent lawyer who is otherwise known as Covid-19 patient #33 in Malaysia, has been a trustee of the NAMA Foundation for the last 17 years.
“The Bin Mahfouz’s family, as the owners of this family waqf, made this donation as thanksgiving for recovery of the discharged patients and to support the Malaysian government’s war against Covid19,” Rosli told Malay Mail.
“In accepting this donation from a certified healthy recovered patient #33, PM Muhyiddin is sending a strong signal that ex-patients are not to be stigmatised and there should not be unfounded fears of their presence in society.
“The brief ceremony is also a demonstration how official and governmental events can take place by observing MOH’s protocols,” Rosli added.
Rosli had previously wrote anonymously then as Covid-19 patient #33 in a now viral note to express his appreciation to the Health Ministry and the Covid-19 frontliners, and had previously also spoken about his experiences of facing stigma as a Covid-19 patient.
Health director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah has repeatedly urged Malaysians not to stigmatise any Covid-19 patients or any groups or clusters linked to Covid-19, while former deputy minister Hannah Yeoh has also encouraged for empathy to be shown instead to encourage Malaysians to step forward for testing.
In a hint of stigma that Covid-19 patients were facing, some of them had taken great pains to list out the chronology of events in their cases, as well as the precautions or measures they had taken to get themselves immediately screened and to prevent others from being infected if they were to test positive.
While the Health Ministry does not reveal the identities of patients to ensure confidentiality and privacy, UDA Holdings Berhad chairman Datuk Hisham Hamdan had for example previously felt compelled to publicly identify himself as Case 26 and clarify the situations surrounding his case.
Contributions from UDA
Today, Muhyiddin also noted that UDA Holdings in early March became one of the government-linked companies that was worst-hit when several of their top management tested positive for Covid-19 and were quarantined in hospital with the majority of them placed at Hospital Sungai Buloh.
Muhyiddin noted however that the company has now made generous contributions to upgrade several quarantine wards in several hospitals to face the possibility of increased Covid-19 cases in mid-April.
He also noted that some of the UDA employees who had recovered from Covid-19 were also involved in a project to create a vaccine by donating their blood serum, adding: “If this project succeeds, they will become saviours.”
“If the whole world can unite to fight Covid-19, then I hope Malaysians will also be able to do it,” he added.
UDA Group Holdings Berhad senior vice-president of human capital Reza Huzairi Zainuddin was yesterday reported to be the first in the country to donate his blood plasma as a former Covid-19 patient to aid in the fight against Covid-19.
UDA Holdings had in late March reportedly donated RM100,000 worth of supplies to the Health Ministry for Covid-19 frontliners and Covid-19 patients.
