What your doctor is reading on Medscape.com:

MAY 06, 2020 -- When pleas for protective equipment continued to go unheeded, a group of physicians decided to take matters into their own hands. They developed their own distribution channel, GetUsPPE.org, to match personal protective equipment (PPE) supplies with those in need.

Within days, they had gathered more than 100 volunteer scientists, programmers, engineers, and concerned citizens and rallied a dozen community organizations to put together a 501(c)(3) charitable organization to fund the project.

"This all happened in the span of a weekend, while we were working clinically taking care of COVID patients," Christopher Barsotti, MD, from the Berkshire Medical Center in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, told Medscape Medical News.

As of this week, GetUsPPE.org has received 7434 requests for help and has delivered 316,965 units to the San Francisco Bay area, 133,500 to Michigan, and 45,065 to Baltimore.

It was a tweet by Esther Choo, MD, from the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, that drew attention on Twitter under the hashtag #GetMePPE. Healthcare workers started sharing pictures of their equipment and stories of their struggles.

Megan Ranney, MD, cofounded GetUsPPE.org along with Choo. Ranney is an emergency physician in Rhode Island Hospital in Providence who, at the end of her shift in the emergency department, carefully removes her N95 mask and puts it in a paper bag, with her name written on it, so she can use it again.

"We're trying different methods to sterilize masks," Ranney explained. "We don't want to run out. It seems impossible that nobody planned for the fact that we were going to need to be protected; it really makes us feel like we are expendable," she said.

And masks can't be procured one at a time. The problem needs to be solved at a national level, so that masks and other equipment can be delivered equitably where need is the greatest, she pointed out.

Ranney and Choo — along with Shuhan He, MD, from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, with a team of medical professionals — are accepting donations.