The Fastest Response is local
The COVID-19 pandemic interrupted medical supply chains across the globe, leaving medical and essential workers without life-saving supplies. In response, local maker communities fabricated PPE and medical supplies for those in need in their own communities and around the world. OSMS Local Response continues to support these efforts.
Image: PUC Rio, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Marcelo Balisteri
Get Involved with Local Response
Learn How
The OSMS COVID-19 Local Response Guide is a how-to playbook: a collection of best practices and specific instructions for those organizing PPE and medical supplies production efforts.
Find my Community
Locate active makers, crafters and manufacturers in your region, explore the need for medical supplies in your community, and check your organization’s details.
Join the Network
The OSMS Local Response Network helps connect and amplify a new ecosystem of maker efforts emerging in response to the COVID-19 emergency.
Groundbreaking Impact
Telling the story of the amazing work done by the OSMS community continues to inspire policymakers to support ongoing efforts. Every Friday from March-August 2020, we asked the global OSMS Local Response Network and OSMS Community Facebook Group to report how many items of PPE they had produced. These numbers, while representative, are the best global portrait of local response production during the COVID-19 crisis.
Portraits of Local Response
Community Conversations
The OSMS YouTube channel offers a playlist of topic-specific Local Response discussions ranging from sustainable business practices for producing PPE to a how-to on protection gowns production.
Our Partnerships
OSMS has partnered with the Translation Commons community to localize the OSMS Medical Supply and Local Response Guides into 44 languages.
OSMS is a founding member of a new coalition of maker organizations that works with the global maker movement to ensure universal access to PPE and medical supplies by mobilizing local manufacturing capabilities.