Message to the LAU Family and Community from President Mawad
Dear LAU Family and Community,
I am delighted to be able to share with you the good news that we have all been waiting for concerning the vaccine.
We can now look with hope to the light at the end of the tunnel following the successful conclusion of the vaccine agreement between the MoPH and a four-member consortium of which we are part. AUB, USJ, and St. George University Hospital are also members.
This happy ending will make it possible for us to acquire Pfizer vaccine for our students, faculty, staff and community, who are yet to be vaccinated.
My expectation is that this will become possible starting in July 2021 strictly through the government platform. With this, we can look forward, albeit with all due precautionary measures, to the restoration of normalcy, resumption of campus life, and in-person delivery in fall 2021.
In lauding the intensive efforts on the part of all concerned that led to the conclusion of the multi-lateral vaccine agreement, a series of acknowledgments are in order. The MoPH played a leading role in facilitating our work, and its officials at various levels starting with the minister and his aides extended every possible help to us. On your behalf, I am thankful to them and other key ministry officials without whose help this agreement would not have been possible.
Our consortium partners were equally forthcoming in bringing our discussions to fruition. To all of them a warm thank you from all of us.
The agreement, which was finalized on April 16 is obviously imperative for our restoration of near-normal life in few months.
It will first allow us to meet our own needs in terms of the immediate LAU family including students, faculty, and staff. We will also have the opportunity to make a contribution within the framework of Ministry efforts to help inoculate the larger community in pursuit of societal immunity.
Under the agreement, LAU will be able to purchase a sufficient number of doses of the Pfizer vaccine. They will be paid for through our fundraising effort currently underway through multiple channels including a crowd-funding platform. A major contribution to that end already made by Mr. Baha Hariri is gratefully acknowledged. All vaccines will be offered free of charge.
Our vaccine-related fundraising efforts continue through a crowdfunding effort that is currently underway for the next six weeks. This was launched last week with promising results and plenty of good will be coming our way from near and far.
In the meantime, you would want to know that our LAUMC-RH has been, all along, at the forefront of the vaccination campaign under the MoPH platform. Scores of thousands of doses have already been dispensed that way and the effort continues. St. John’s in Jounieh has joined the effort recently as well.
As you have come to rightfully expect, your university is a national leader in health care delivery and community service. We will now be able to demonstrate, yet again, the LAU ethos of leadership in action, resolve against adversity and proactive action in times of crisis.
Together we stand for restoring hope and resuming normal life with all due precautionary measures in place.
Michel E. Mawad, M.D.
President