In Santa Barbara, forklifts chug through the warehouse of Direct Relief, hustling pallets of much-needed medical supplies into waiting FedEx trucks. Normally those gloves, masks and medicines would go to desperately poor clinics in Haiti or Sudan, but now they’re racing off to Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto, California and the Robert Wood Johnson Hospitals in New Jersey.
Direct Relief is just one of several U.S. charities that traditionally operate in countries stricken by war and natural disaster that are now sending humanitarian aid to some of the wealthiest communities in America to help manage the coronavirus pandemic.