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Nigerian tailor Queen Duruibe has been producing face masks since January but says she has now taken on more staff and converted her fashion store in Aba, Nigeria to make up to 10,000 masks per day.
Nigerian tailor Queen Duruibe has been producing face masks since January but says she has now taken on more staff and converted her fashion store in Aba, Nigeria to make up to 10,000 masks per day. Courtesy Sam Hart

As the world experiences a shortage of personal protective equipment in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, tailors in Nigeria are responding by hand-making equipment like overalls and face masks.

Rising demand, panic buying, hoarding, and misuse have disrupted the global supply of PPE, according to the World Health Organization, putting lives at risk.

Now, tailors in Abia state, in the southeast of the country, are using local fabrics, cotton, and polypropylene to sew PPE for people looking to protect themselves.

«I sew different types of clothes here in Aba and I usually buy my materials from China,» said one of the tailors, Queen Duruibe. «But when coronavirus happened, they (her suppliers) started telling me how bad things are, that there are no materials and face masks are scarce.

«So I thought to myself that if things are so scarce, I can actually start producing them myself.»

With cases of Covid-19 rising in Nigeria, the Abia state government released a 12 million naira ($31,000) grant to support tailors to make the protective gear.

So far, tailors in Aba, the state’s commercial nerve center, have produced 200,000 face masks and 3,000 overalls, the agency said.

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