As you know, oxygen concentrators are among the most critical items needed to treat people with severe COVID-19, who often arrive at hospitals with extreme hypoxemia. I wanted to give you an update on SCCM's response efforts in this regard.
We recently had success in shipping 200 oxygen concentrators to our partner societies in Brazil (AMIB- Associacao de Medicina Intensiva Brasileira and SOMETI- Sociedade Mineira de Terapia Intensiva) who will distribute this much-needed equipment and other medical supplies.
Healthcare leaders in India have estimated the need for 200,000 oxygen concentrators; however, rising COVID-19 cases have caused many local manufacturing plants to shut down, resulting in severe shortages of oxygen throughout this country as well.
SCCM and our partner Direct Relief, are working with several local Indian nonprofits and SCCM's significant list of contacts in India to secure and transport approximately 10,000 oxygen concentrators, along with other requested medical supplies. We are coordinating with Swasth (a network of self-sustaining health centers that provide healthcare services to India's urban poor), and with ActGrants who is working to deploy 50,000 oxygen concentrators across India. Importantly ActGrants has licenses to receive charitable funding from international entities outside of India, as it is challenging to even donate funds directly to India's charities. If you want to donate cash directly to Indian charities it is best to go to ActGrants (https://actgrants.in/).
Amazon has agreed to transport the oxygen concentrators from China and Singapore (without cost) where they are manufactured and then distribute them in-country from its hub in Bangalore. Other logistics contacts are also assisting with the shipments.
We are not currently accepting volunteers who may wish to travel to India to provide medical care. A call for volunteers must originate at the source and must be made by someone in authority able to issue licenses, provide housing and manage the volunteers on site. We have not received any official request for volunteers.
As always, you can reach our Emergency Response team at
emergency@sccm.org, which is always monitored.
David
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David Martin
CEO/Executive Vice-President
Society of Critical Care Medicine
dmartin@sccm.org------------------------------