AXA Philippines recently partnered with the Manila Doctors Hospital Corporate Social Responsibility Office to help members of the hearing-impaired community understand and diseminate information on the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

 They teamed up for a special project called Healthcare Equality and Accessibility for the Rights of the Deaf (HEARD), which aims to train the hospital’s healthcare front-liners to be able to independently communicate with deaf patients.

HEARD provided translator assistance to Manila Doctors Hospital’s deaf program through the Filipino Sign Language (FSL) Access Team for COVID-19.It is composed of volunteer doctors, healthcare professionals, sign language interpreters, technology professionals in delivering quality healthcare for the deaf.

“Proper dissemination of information is vital to the management and containment of the ongoing pandemic,” says Rahul Hora, AXA Philippines president and CEO. “While we are getting information from all media platforms, the deaf community do not have easy access. Through our advocacy and with the help of the FSL Access Team, the hearing-impaired will now have better understanding the ongoing health crisis.”

Aside from providing translator assistance, AXA Philippines has also donated 100 food packs to deaf patients and has given 19 units of respirators to the hospital which will be donated to public medical centers soon.

AXA Philippines also made a monetary donation to the Philippine Red Cross to procure surgical masks and food packs to all volunteers, which were distributed to 37 hospitals around Metro Manila and Rizal Province.

To know more about AXA Philippines corporate social responsibility efforts, visit www.axa.com.ph.