Doctors launch fund to support healthcare workers & their families

Two doctors from UMC Utrecht established a support fund for healthcare workers who work intensively with coronavirus patients and therefore stand a bigger risk of becoming infected with Covid-19. The fund is meant to pay money to the healthcare workers' families should they die or become sick, NOS and RTL Nieuws report.

Surgeons Sander Muijs and Marijn Houwert worry that the Netherlands is not taking sufficient care of all their colleagues on the front line. They therefore set up foundation ZWIC and this fund, hoping that the government, organizations, companies, and citizens will contribute to it.

Based on the sickness- and death rates of healthcare workers abroad, they estimate that around 400 healthcare workers in the Netherlands may end up in ICU with the coronavirus, and around a hundred may die of Covid-19.

The idea behind the foundation is that healthcare workers like nurses and ambulance personnel don't have to worry about the financial consequences for themselves and their families should they themselves become sick. Muijs and Houwert hope that the fund will be able to support healthcare workers and their families for two years, in the event of death or disability.

"Applause is nice, support is better," Houwert said to RTL Nieuws.