This story is from May 10, 2021

Gifting breath of life: Indians in US send 3,800 oxygen concentrators

US-based Indian doctors and philanthropic groups have joined hands with Parel’s Tata Memorial Hospital to tackle the surge in demand for medical oxygen.
Gifting breath of life: Indians in US send 3,800 oxygen concentrators
An NGO distributes ration in Ambedkar Nagar near Backbay bus depot
MUMBAI: US-based Indian doctors and philanthropic groups have joined hands with Parel’s Tata Memorial Hospital to tackle the surge in demand for medical oxygen. On Sunday, 3,800 oxygen concentrato-rs landed at Mumbai and Delhi airports from the US where the devices travelled to nearly 40 hospitals in 15 states. Another batch of 1,500 oxygen concentrators is likely to arrive soon.
Dr Rajendra Badwe, director of Tata Memorial Centre (TMC), said the diaspora has arranged over 5,000 oxygen concentrators in record 10 days.
These, he said, will help decongest ICUs and oxygen beds and support patients waiting for a hospital bed. The devices would be distributed to over 200 hospitals in the National Cancer Grid (NCG) and other state and civic facilities treating Covid patients, he said. In Mumbai, KEM, Sion and JJ hospitals will get the devices.
The idea started with a California-based humanitarian organization, Community Partners International, offering to donate 73 new oxygen concentrators. It followed with Gitika Srivastava and Dr Naresh Ramarajan, Boston-based founders of Navya, TMC’s online opinion service, proposing to send the devices to TMC. The first lot of 100 concentrators were sent from San Francisco to a TMC centre in Assam via Delhi, said Badwe, adding that this led to Air India partnering with TMC to carry more supplies.
Simultaneously, in New York, another set of doctors at the New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medicine mobilised support to send 100 concentrators. Thereafter, the New York Presbyterian Hospital donated $2 million to procure 2,800 oxygen concentrators that FedEx agreed to fly. “Since the flight has a capacity of 81,000kg, we didn’t want a single inch to go empty. So on, May 1, groups there initiated a campaign and raised Rs 18 crore,” said Dr Pankaj Chaturvedi, deputy director of epidemiology. The FedEx cargo plane with 81,000kg of medical equipment, including 3,400 portable oxygen concentrators, nasal cannulas, voltage converters, 3 lakh N95 masks landed in Mumbai on Sunday. An AI flight reached Delhi later with 400 oxygen concentrators.
Dr C S Pramesh, director, of Tata Memorial Hospital said, “We are collecting requests for equipment and consumables from hospitals across the NCG and mapping the current incidence of infections to determine where the greatest needs are.” The disbursement will be sent to centres in Maharashtra, Delhi, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Assam and West Bengal among other states.
End of Article
FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA