Dolly Parton is making headlines across the globe for her massive donation to a successful COVID-19 vaccine research programme. In April, Parton donated over R16 million to research saying on Instagram,” My longtime friend Dr Naji Abumrad, who’s been involved in research at Vanderbilt for many years, informed me that they were making some exciting advancements towards that research of the coronavirus for a cure. I am making a donation of $1 million to Vanderbilt towards that research and to encourage people that can afford it to make donations.”
Naji works at the Vanderbilt Institute for Infection, Immunology and Inflammation at Vanderbilt University hospital in Nashville, Tennessee and has been friends with Dolly since treating her in 2014 after she was involved in a car accident.
The 74-year-old country music icon is known for her enormous generosity and kind-heartedness and now it looks like her donation really has made a difference in the fight against the virus. The Moderna vaccine has shown 95% protection from the virus.
A tweet shared Monday by a planning student at the University of Maryland went viral after it highlighted Dolly’s donation and subsequent credit in the Moderna vaccine preliminary report from the New England Journal of Medicine.
Fact-checking this was worth it just to see @DollyParton in the acknowledgments of a @NEJM article. And I thought I couldn’t love her more. https://t.co/S3njHEFcGT pic.twitter.com/WcrFIrHp67
— Dr. Meade Krosby (@MeadeKrosby) November 17, 2020
Take a look at the clip from the Today Show right here.
When I donated the money to the Covid fund I just wanted it to do good and evidently, it is! Let’s just hope we can find a cure real soon. pic.twitter.com/dQgDWexO0C
— Dolly Parton (@DollyParton) November 17, 2020
