A powerful Indian-American doctors’ group has initiated talks with the Canadian government to urgently donate to India as many as 5,000 ventilators that it had purchased last year at the peak of their Covid-19 wave and are now unused.
Dr Sudhakar Jonnalagadda, president of the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin, said: “We're working with Canada and the government. They have about 5,000 ventilators."
"It is with the Red Cross of Canada. We are urging the Canadian Government to donate this to India through the Red Cross to address the current Covid-19 crisis,” he told PTI in an interview.
Jonnalagadda, said AAPI doctors working on this are hoping that the Canadian Government would agree to their request to donate it free to address the major health crisis in India.
Also read: Indian-American doctors for removal of hurdles to provide services to Covid-19 patients in India
Describing the current situation in India as horrible, he said that thousands of Indian-American doctors have come forward to help their motherland. It ranges from raising funds to providing voluntary counselling services.
Dr Anupama Gotiumukula, AAPI’s president-elect, said they had a call with the Canadian Government over the matter on Wednesday.
“They have 5,000 ventilators which they want to send to India in collaboration with AAPI,” she said, hoping that these lives saving ventilators would soon be shipped to India.
Indian-American doctors, she said, are very motivated to help India.
According to Dr Gotiumukula, AAPI doctors are now working with the Indian Government to urgently develop a platform through which Indian-American doctors can provide free health care services and tele-health to patients in India.
A meeting over the matter was held on Tuesday.
The meeting was attended by Dr Anurag Mairal, an Adjunct Professor of Medicine and the Director, Global Outreach Programmes at Stanford Byers Center for Bio design, Stanford University; Ayesha Choudhury Officer on Special Duty (OSD), Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India and Dr Vijay Raghavan, Principal scientific adviser for the government of India and Dr Prasad Garimella from Atlanta.
“So, we had a very productive teleconference last night to discuss the development of a tele-health platform for the Indian government with the help of US technology. Hopefully, that will become live pretty soon,” Dr Gotiumukula said.
During this crisis, two telehealth platforms – eglobaldoctirs.com and MdTok.Com -- have been offered free to AAPI doctors for the short term.
But the one being developed by the Indian Government in association with US technology would be permanent in nature and would include liability coverage and clear them of all legal hurdles, she said.
Such a platform would address the crisis of the severe shortage of doctors in India. AAPI is also conducting zoom sessions for Indian doctors.
New coronavirus cases and deaths in India on Thursday hit a record daily high with 4,12,262 new infections and 3,980 fatalities being reported, taking the total tally of Covid-19 cases to 2,10,77,410 and the death toll to 2,30,168.
The active cases have increased to 35,66,398.