Mastercard has donated $8.9 million to a New York-based non-profit body, American India Foundation, to install 2,000 portable beds in India which is reeling under the second wave of COVID-19 pandemic.
The AIF said the grant is estimated to help 2.5 million Indians to gain access to healthcare. “This is AIF’s largest-ever gift, and these funds will be used to procure and place portable hospitals in areas of greatest need across the country,” the non-profit body said in a press release. “Every bed unit will be equipped with ventilator, medical equipment and other supplies. Each unit can easily be deconstructed or re-purposed as extra space for various community needs, such as extra classrooms.”
A New Jersey-based Mount Sinai Hospital has also announced that it will be shipping 25 ventilators and 100 sleep apnea machines with kits to convert them to ventilators, to hospitals all over India through a chartered plane to Mumbai on May 3. An official statement said this effort is being led by Dr Ash Tewari, chair of the Department of Urology and Michael J McCarry, Senior Vice President of Perioperative Services. “Mount Sinai Hospital acquired these ventilators for its own COVID-19 surge last year and we are pleased that now they can be directed to where they can be of more use.” It said ventilators, resmed oxygen devices and supplies are being split into five pallets to be sent to five public hospitals in Mumbai, Delhi, Kanpur, Kolkata and Bengaluru.
Dr Tewari through his foundation – The Global Prostrate Cancer Research Foundation has also purchased disposable supplies for 100 patients and will also be helping to fund the costs of the air shipping.
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Currently, India is caught up in the battle of the second wave of COVID-19 infections with 400,000 new cases being recorded in the past 24 hours.
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