India Post News Service
Houston, TX: Sewa International has spent more than six million dollars in the last two weeks to procure lifesaving equipment such as oxygen concentrators, ventilators, BiPap, and CPAP machines as part of its ‘Help India Defeat COVID-19’ Campaign.
Sewa shipped 260 Inogen oxygen concentrators, 1,000 oximeters, and nineBiPap machines from New York on Friday, May 7. UPS Foundation partnered with Sewa International to ship them to New Delhi by air for free. MedShare, a non-profit organization that sources and delivers surplus medical supplies and equipment to communities in need, donated the concentrators.
So far, Sewa has spent over $3.5 million to order 7,482 oxygen concentrators and procured 5,118 of them from various vendors in the US and elsewhere. Sewa has shipped 2,844 of them and 2,084 of them have reached India. They are being distributed to government hospitals and COVID-19 care centers and hospitals run by Sewa’s partner organizations.
Sewa is planning to shipover6,000 additional oxygen concentrators to India in the next two weeks. “Shipping large quantities of medical equipment to another country from the US has a lot of logistical challenges. We are optimizing our shipments so that they reach India fast,” Sewa’s President Arun Kankani said.
“Sewa has established a control room in Atlanta, and it is managed by ten Sewa volunteers. They are constantly researching the availability of medical equipment, vendor credentials, price, and other details to purchase them or find donors who can donate them to us,”Kankani said.
“We have received phenomenal support from across the US for our ‘Help India Defeat COVID-19 campaign’. Many corporates, hospitals, and community organizations are calling us to offer help. Sewa volunteers are working hard to connect the dots. We thank all those who have given help and continue to offer support to Sewain this time of crisis,” Arun Kankani said.
Help Has Reached 17 States
“Oxygen concentrators distributed by Sewa have reached 17 states in India so far — Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chattisgarh, Delhi, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab, Rajasthan, Telangana, Uttarakhand, and Uttar Pradesh,” Sewa’s Vice President for Disaster Recovery Swadesh Katoch said.“It’s very important to save every life and I am confident that the equipment we have sent to India will ease the shortage of emergency equipment and help COVID-19 patients recover and enable families to protect their loved ones,” he said.
Sewa started its campaign to aid India on April 23 amid an alarming rise in the daily number of new COVID-19 cases and fatalities. Sewa has raised $16 million for this initiative so far including $7.7 million from over 104,000 donors from its Facebook campaign and $4.2 million through its website http://www.sewausa.org.
About Sewa International
Sewa International (www.sewausa.org) is a 501 (c)(3) Hindu faith-based charitable nonprofit that works in the areas of disaster recovery, education, and development. Sewa has 43 Chapters across the USA and serves regardless of race, color, religion, sex, age, disability, or national origin.
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