Factsheet: Jack Ma Foundation and Alibaba Foundation’s Global Donations and Efforts to Combat Covid-19
Alizila Staff | April 15, 2020
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This factsheet lists the philanthropic efforts to combat Covid-19 undertaken through the Alibaba Foundation, the Jack Ma Foundation and the Joe and Clara Tsai Foundation. Through their combined efforts, the foundations have donated over 200 million units of personal protective equipment, testing kits and ventilators to over 150 countries and regions. As of March 31, 2020, Alibaba Group together with Ant Group have contributed approximately RMB3.4 billion ($476 million) in value in the form of donations, subsidies and technical support. In addition, Alibaba has taken a wide range of business initiatives to support consumers, partners and merchants as they retool, rebuild and recover during this challenging time, which you can read about here.
Part I: Global Donations of Medical Supplies
World Health Organization
On April 21, the Alibaba Foundation and the Jack Ma Foundation announced a donation of 100 million face masks, 1 million N95 masks and 1 million test kits to the World Health Organization (WHO) to be distributed globally to the countries and regions deemed to be in urgent need by WHO.
Africa
On March 16, the Jack Ma Foundation and Alibaba Foundation committed to donating 100,000 masks, 20,000 test kits and 1,000 sets of protective clothing and face shields to each of the 54 nations on the African continent.
On April 6, an additional donation of medical supplies to all 54 countries of Africa was announced. The donation includes 500 ventilators, 200,000 sets of protective clothing and face shields, 2,000 thermometers, 1 million swabs and extraction kits, and 500,000 gloves.
Supplies were transported throughout the continent with the help of partners – the Ethiopian Government, Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), World Health Organization (WHO) and Ethiopian Airlines.
On April 14, the African Union (AU), WFP, and WHO announced the departure of the first United Nations “Solidarity Flight.” The flight included, among others, a large quantity of personal protective equipment donated by the Jack Ma Foundation and Alibaba Foundation to all countries in Africa.
On April 20, the Jack Ma Foundation and Alibaba Foundation announced a third batch of donations to Africa – with 4.6 million masks, 500,000 swabs and test kits, 300 ventilators, 200,000 sets of protective clothing, 200,000 face shields, 2,000 temperature guns, 100 body temperature scanners and 500,000 pairs of gloves to the AU and Africa CDC for distribution.
On March 13, the Jack Ma Foundation and Alibaba Foundation announced a donation of 500,000 test kits and 1 million masks to the U.S. The donation was received by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba Group and the Jack Ma Foundation, announced the donation in his first tweet after officially joining Twitter.
In early April, the Joe and Clara Tsai Foundation, Jack Ma Foundation and Alibaba Foundation donated 2,000 ventilators, 2.6 million face masks and 170,000 goggles to the Greater New York Hospital Association. See details here.
Canada
On March 31, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau acknowledged Alibaba’s donation of 500,000 masks and 100,000 test kits in his daily press briefing and subsequently in a tweet. A transcript of his remarks can be found here.
Latin America
On March 22, Jack Ma announced in a tweet a donation of 2 million masks, 400,000 test kits, 104 ventilators from the Jack Ma Foundation and Alibaba Foundation to 24 Latin American countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Ecuador, Dominican Republic and Peru.
Asia
In early March, the Jack Ma Foundation and Alibaba Foundation announced the donation of 1 million masks to Japan.
In early March, the Jack Ma Foundation and Alibaba Foundation announced the donation of 1 million masks to Korea.
On March 19, the Jack Ma Foundation and Alibaba Foundation announced the donation of 2 million masks, 150,000 test kits, 20,000 sets of protective clothing and 20,000 face shields to Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand.
On March 21, Jack Ma announced in a tweet that the Jack Ma Foundation and Alibaba Foundation pledged to donate 1.8 million masks, 210,000 test kits, 36,000 sets of protective clothing plus ventilators and thermometers to 10 Asian countries including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Laos, Maldives, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. More details here.
On March 29, the Jack Ma Foundation and Alibaba Foundation announced that they would increase their coronavirus-relief efforts across Asia by donating medical supplies – including 1.7 million face masks, 165,000 test kits as well as protective clothing and other equipment – to Azerbaijan, Bhutan, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Vietnam and Uzbekistan.
As of March 29, the two Foundations have donated essential medical supplies to 23 Asian countries totaling 7.4 million masks, 485,000 test kits, 100,000 sets of protective clothing along with other medical equipment. More details here.
Europe
In March, the Jack Ma Foundation and Alibaba Foundation donated a total of 2 million masks and other medical supplies, such as test kits, to help combat Covid-19 in Europe.
European countries that have received donations include Italy, Belgium, Spain, Slovenia, France, Austria, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, Portugal, Montenegro and the UK.
Following the first batch of donations, in March, a further delivery of medical supplies by the Jack Ma Foundation and Alibaba Foundation arrived at Liege Airport in Belgium for further transportation and distribution to countries across Europe. The donation included 800 ventilators, 300,000 sets of protective clothing and 300,000 face shields to hospitals in Europe.
Middle East
On March 29, two cargo flights carrying medical supplies donations for Israel by Jack Ma Foundation and Alibaba Foundation arrived in Tel Aviv, Israel.
On April 4, the Jack Ma Foundation and Alibaba Foundation donated 100,000 Covid-19 detection kits, 30 ventilators, 300,000 medical face masks, 50 infrared thermometer guns, and 10,000 sets of protective clothing for medical professionals to Jordan.
Part II: Supporting Vaccine Development and Medical Communities
Vaccine Development
The Jack Ma Foundation committed RMB100 million ($14.4 million) in support of research for developing vaccines for the new coronavirus. The donation has gone to researchers from Columbia University, Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity in Australia, the Chinese Academy of Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Zhong Nanshan Medical Foundation in China. Researchers span fields such as infectious diseases, critical illness, respiratory medicine, medicinal chemistry, immunology and medicine. As part of this commitment:
Columbia University: The Jack Ma Foundation awarded a $2.1 million grant to four research teams to identify potential antiviral drugs and antibodies for use against Covid-19.
The Jack Ma Foundation and Alibaba Foundation shared a coronavirus prevention and treatment handbook with key lessons and experience from doctors, healthcare workers and hospital administrators at the First Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine (FAHZU), who were at the frontline of Covid-19 treatment in China and crucial to slowing its spread.
This handbook is available for download here and it is now in 23 languages, including English, Chinese, Arabic, Dutch, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Thai and Turkish.
International Medical Expert Communication Platform
The Global MediXchange for Combating Covid-19 (GMCC) program was jointly established by the Jack Ma Foundation and Alibaba Foundation. It is designed for medical experts around the world to communicate seamlessly with each other to share their invaluable experience of fighting Covid-19 and to ask and answer each other’s questions.
A centerpiece of the GMCC program is the International Medical Expert Communication Platform. The platform is a free collaboration tool based on Alibaba’s enterprise productivity app DingTalk for medical professionals to share information and advice on the prevention and treatment of the Covid-19 outbreak. The platform supports real-time AI translation into 11 languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Indonesian, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, Thai, Turkish, and Vietnamese), as well as free communication in audio, video teleconferences and live broadcast.
Medical professionals around the world can communicate with Chinese doctors in one-on-one sharing sessions, or participate in livestreaming sessions hosted by Chinese hospitals. On the first day of its launch on March 18, the platform received applications from nearly 200 hospitals in 45 countries.
On April 11, Jack Ma tweeted about the first China-Africa Covid-19 webinar. The session, which was hosted on April 10, aimed to share best practices and insights on the treatment of Covid-19 patients, and connected doctors and medical professionals from the Second Affiliated Hospital Zhejiang University (SAHZU), Ethiopia’s St. Paul’s Hospital and 20+ other Ethiopian hospitals. Additional medical exchange sessions for more hospitals across Africa are also planned.
On April 28, Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma took part in a livestreamed webinar on the GMCC that was co-hosted by the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
More than 500 medical experts worldwide joined a webinar on advances in the development of Covid-19 treatments. The two-hour session featured presentations from leading infectious-disease researchers David Ho, Paul Kellam, Sharon Lewin and Linqi Zhang.
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