COVID-19 Initiative

Banco Santander promoted this solidarity initiative in 2020 to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic. The fund was created from a reduction in the salaries of the Board and senior management, as well as from voluntary contributions by third parties and Grupo Santander employees. 

Since then, the foundation has taken over the management of donations to different health organisations and the purchase and distribution of medical equipment to hospitals and other institutions.

In 2021—and coinciding with a rise of cases in Portugal in February and March—the requisite material was donated to the Hospital Beatriz Ângelo in Loures, the Hospital Professor Doutor Fernando Fonseca in Amadora and the Centro Hospitalario de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro in Vila Real to monitor and care for infected patients.

The fund also contributed to financing the ACT Accelerator—within the international collaboration framework promoted by the World Health Organization (WHO) and its partners to speed up the finding of effective tools against COVID-19—and COVAX —its line of work focusing on developing vaccines co-led by the GAVI Alliance for Vaccines and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI)—. The end goal is to ensure equal access by all countries, regardless of their standard of living, to diagnostic, treatment and immunisation resources.