EIGHTY medical frontliners at the Penang Hospital have been receiving delicious vegetarian lunch since June 21, courtesy of Buddhist Tzu Chi Merits Society Malaysia.
Khoo Boo Leong, who is the society’s commissioner in Penang, said the Tzu Chi’s volunteers wanted to show their appreciation to the Penang Hospital medical team who have been tirelessly providing services to the community.
“Our volunteers are providing vegetarian lunch from Monday to Saturday.
“The effort, for a period of two weeks, started since June 21.
“It is in recognition and appreciation of the frontliners,” he said.
Khoo said: “Since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, Tzu Chi’s founder Master Cheng Yen has been urging everyone to adopt a vegetarian diet to accumulate ‘common blessings’ as a way to end the pandemic.”
“Even from a non-religious point of view, a vegetarian diet is healthier since it reduces the risk of heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, and cancer. The diet also lowers blood pressure and so on.
“Production of vegetarian food from farm-to-plate is also much friendlier to the environment because it produces much less carbon and greenhouse gases compared to meat production,” Khoo said.
He said that Tzu Chi volunteers understand the sacrifices, hard work of the medical team, therefore, prepared ‘care packages’ and vegetarian lunch boxes for them to look after their health.
A medical frontliner, Dr Chow Ting Soo thanked Tzu Chi for the kind initiative.
“Many of us (the Penang Hospital medical team) were surprised to receive the vegetarian lunch. This is a very kind gesture from Tzu Chi.
“We (the Covid-19 team) cannot simply leave the wards to get food because we are wearing the PPEs.
“We appreciate the effort from Tzu Chi.
“We are very grateful to Tzu Chi, and other kind donors who had also provided meals to us during this pandemic period.
“They were Olive Tree Hotel, Sin Boon Kee Coffee Concept Store, Dim Sum Valet, Soroptimist Penang, Quallys Nusantara Kitchen, Forest Cloud, and other individual sponsors,” Dr Chow said.
Another medical frontliner, Dr Tan Shin Wuei said with the frontliners were deeply touched by the assistance from the donors.
“It shows that people care for the frontliners.
“It also helps to reduce the risk of exposure,” Dr Tan said.
Dr Tan thanked Tzu Chi for its unwavering help to the community.
Story by Christopher Tan
Pix courtesy of Penang Buddhist Tzu Chi Merits Society Malaysia