From Dartmouth Students and Alumni: An appeal for COVID-19 Relief

India is currently experiencing a devastating second wave of COVID-19. A wave that is creating an imbalance between the country’s resources and its pressing public health needs. In fact, India’s official count of new coronavirus infections rose from an average of about 11,000 a day in mid-February to a daily average of more than 370,000 per day in the first week of May alone.

Hospitals are over capacity, oxygen demands are far exceeding supplies, crematoria are overflowing and everyone – civilians, healthcare workers and government employees are stretched to their limit. The urgency of this moment calls for collective action against a severe humanitarian crisis that is cutting across all sections of India’s population. And, as in all crises, it’s the marginalized who suffer the most. 

A group of students and alumni from Dartmouth College have identified 5 non-profit organizations that have both a significant track record and are doing tremendous work in battling the COVID-19 crisis on different fronts, in different parts of the country. This work includes providing oxygen and setting up COVID-19 treatment facilities, to distributing food and medical kits to marginalised and rural communities. The organisations are Doctors for You, Hasiru Dala, Pragyata Foundation, Project Mumbai and Sapna Foundation. You can learn a little about what each of them is doing below, along with links for further reading.

Give India is a fundraising platform (India’s largest and oldest) through which we are collecting and donating funds. The funds that are raised will be equally distributed amongst each of the organizations below. Please note that your donations are tax deductible in the US, UK and India under 501(c)(3), Gift Aid and Section 80(G) respectively.

Please feel free to donate what you can, no amount is too small, and each one is truly, deeply appreciated. If you have questions or concerns, please reach out to avanti.maluste@gmail.com or raj@42students.com

With so much gratitude,

Aanchal Aneja, T’16; Tanvi Chug, D’11, Raj Koganti, D’08, Avanti Maluste, T’14 and Harshit Yadav, D’22 on behalf of the Dartmouth Club of India

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The following are the beneficiaries of this campaign:

Doctors for You

Doctors for You (DFY) was established in 2007 by doctors and medical students to deliver humanitarian and medical aid, disaster, epidemic and emergency response services to vulnerable communities. In March 2020, DFY started its COVID-19 response by launching “Protect the Protector”, a campaign focused on distributing free PPE kits to government and private hospitals treating COVID-19 patients. It also established 12 COVID-19 hospitals across the country, which treated >30,000 patients and a COVID-19 awareness and testing program that reached >500,000 people across 12 states. During the second wave, DFY has so far set up 23 COVID Treatment Facilities in Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities and is now working on setting up PSA oxygen generators and distributing oxygen cylinders and concentrators. In parallel, DFY has set up and is operating 54 vaccination centers in 10 cities across the country and has plans to deploy 300 more in the coming days.

Hasiru Dala

Hasiru Dala (“Green Force”), is 10-year-old social impact organization that works with waste pickers (people who collect household and commercial/industrial waste from landfills or dump sites) and other waste workers to ensure a life with dignity. Often, waste pickers have little if any stable income, and are often marginalized. Hasiru Dala has worked to support them through the pandemic – with ration kits containing food and household staples, medical and sanitation kits for families with COVID positive members, medical support, hygiene training and awareness building related to COVID-19. Currently, they require funding to support the children of waste pickers who have families impacted by COVID-19. In this campaign, they plan to reach 6,000 waste picker families in 24 cities in the state of Karnataka and 2 in Andhra Pradesh

Pragyata Foundation

Pragyata Foundation was established in 2015 to expand education and mental health access in rural India, primarily near the capital, Haryana, Rajasthan, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh. Pragyata had established centers in 32 villages that were used as focal points for villagers (particularly children) to gather and supplement their education. When COVID-19 hit, Pragyata changed its focus to public health awareness – educating people in the villages they served about the pandemic, how to use personal protective equipment, and how to use government resources such as the Aarogya Setu app, which is a contact tracing app created by the Indian government. Pragyata Foundation also distributed food to migrant workers, and distributed sanitizers, sanitary pads, soaps and clothing. Spreading pandemic awareness and distributing supplies is a key component of their work, and they hope to expand to 100 more villages that are otherwise underserved in pursuit of this mission.

Project Mumbai

Project Mumbai began with the imperative to improve healthcare (especially mental health), the environment, governance and safety in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR). It pivoted in March 2020 to focus on COVID-19 relief. It began with Khaana Chahiye (literally “want food”), providing meals to >6.5 million people and groceries to >30,000 families. It also set up a state-wide mental health hotline, free deliveries of food and medicine to elderly citizens living alone, a call center for those who were home quarantined, a dashboard that listed non-COVID hospitals and distributed what was then the largest donation of PPE’s in the country. Project Mumbai is now expanding its mandate to tackle healthcare infrastructure – hospital beds, particularly ICU beds with oxygen supply, are critically low. Project Mumbai is working with public and private hospitals to ramp up ICU and hospital bed capacity and on increasing the number of oxygen cylinders, concentrators, BIPAP’s and ventilators available to the healthcare system in the MMR. In addition, it is distributing oxygen concentrators to citizens who are home quarantined and are below the poverty line, and grocery kits for those who have lost their jobs.

Sapna

Sapna, which was originally established to expand healthcare access, education, women’s rights and sanitation among other things, is addressing the COVID19 crisis by distributing COVID care kits (CCKs), comprising of a thermometer, an oximeter, hand sanitizer, N95 mask, medicines and rations for a week to moderately ill patients in Delhi and Chhattisgarh. Sapna is also setting up a 100-bed COVID Care Center (of which 24 beds are operational) in Faridabad, near Delhi, to treat moderately ill COVID patients with a volunteer team of doctors and nurses. In Bihar, in the absence of effective ambulatory services, Sapna is introducing a fleet of Auto-Ambulances to ferry COVID patients from semi-urban and rural areas, and to increase food and medicine-outreach. Sapna is also expanding their COVID relief work to Rajasthan. In addition to the initiatives above, a part of the funds generated will be used to support their frontline workers.

All images/videos courtesy of CNN, Project Mumbai, Pragyata Foundation and Doctors for You