A Winnipegger has started a campaign to get medical equipment to COVID-stricken India, where more than 2,000 deaths have been reported each day this week as new cases soar over 300,000 a day.
“It’s a very critical situation where everybody has to manage how they kind of get about their day-to-day life. The cases are rising constantly and hospitals are full,” said Anil Sedha, whose GoFundMe campaign aims to raise $19,500 to purchase and ship up to 15 oxygen concentrators to the country.
“I am just trying to do my small bit and help a few people survive.”
Indian hospitals are reporting acute shortages of beds and medicine and are running on dangerously low levels of oxygen. The New Delhi High Court last week ordered the government to divert oxygen from industrial use to hospitals.
About the size of a computer tower, the oxygen concentrators take in ambient air and filter it to release the nitrogen, leaving 90-95 per cent pure oxygen.
Sedha’s brother and sister-in-law live in Thane, a city of more than 1.8 million people outside Mumbai. They are afraid to leave their apartment to get vaccinated, as are many of Sedha’s friends.
To get vaccinated, they must stand in line, waiting alongside thousands of others, he said.
“They felt that they would actually catch the virus from there, so they left.”
Sedha knows many people who have died and has a cousin who became infected with COVID-19 after serving as a volunteer, taking people to hospitals.
“His lungs are completely damaged now, so for life, he’s got to be on an oxygen concentrator,” said Sedha, who’s the founder of CloudGenie Corp., which specializes in data centre technology and IT security.
Seeing how important the concentrators are, Sedha decided to help out. Initially, he was going to donate just one or two on his own but then decided to try expanding on that through a fundraiser.
“Initially we thought we will send them to specific hospitals in the rural areas or smaller hospitals that don’t have that outreach,” he said.
“But now, because of the volume of help required, the Indian government has now forced everyone to send them to the Indian Red Cross, which is even better, because then it allows for equitable distribution. So the Indian Red Cross is taking over the distribution of oxygen concentrators.”
Sedha has partnered with a distributor in Colorado to purchase the devices, which cost about $1,495 US each.
“In Canada, you can’t just buy an oxygen concentrator without a prescription, and if I tried to buy it as a business, I would need a medical establishment licence, which I don’t have,” he said.
Going through U.S. channels, he can buy directly from the distributor, while international courier DHL has promised to expedite its services.
Many countries are stepping up to help India with various forms of medical aid and there are numerous campaigns on social media, but Sedha didn’t see any based in Manitoba, so he decided to get that going.
As India’s COVID-19 death toll pushes toward the 200,000 mark, with deaths likely underreported as people die without medical care, Sedha said all he can do is hope his campaign can make a difference for a few people.
“When you hear about news of people passing away, you know, about people in your community that you were in touch with, it’s a little bit personal,” he said.
