Seema Devgan has all but abandoned her day job, as she and a loose collection of overseas volunteers scramble to locate desperately needed supplies for COVID-19-stricken family, friends and strangers in India.
From her apartment in Singapore, Devgan spends hours each day fielding frantic appeals for help on WhatsApp, telephoning suppliers, and scouting for desperately needed drugs and oxygen.
“It’s so difficult,” the 47-year-old said, briefly struggling to hold back tears in the face of the sheer enormity of the task. “We are going to lose so many people.”
Photo: AFP
India’s global diaspora has a long record of mobilizing during times of crisis — temples, mosques and churches; business associations; family groups and informal networks — all spring into action when a typhoon or flood strikes, but few disasters have been quite so testing as the COVID-19 outbreak engulfing the nation.
No matter how much money is raised, empty drug store shelves cannot be magically refilled. Oxygen generators and concentrators have to be located, ordered and shipped before they can start saving lives. A shattered healthcare system cannot be rebuilt overnight.
“This is an unprecedented kind of a situation,” said Devgan, a Dutch national and entrepreneur who has lived in Singapore for the past two years. “It’s not those kinds of campaigns where you can just contribute and somebody on the ground will take care of it.”
Simran Sharma, a 24-year-old graduate student at Tufts University in Boston, described the hopelessness many have felt as messages pour into family WhatsApp groups about friends and loved ones laid low.
“This crisis is just insane,” Sharmsa said by telephone, detailing how her father’s close friend had died. “His wife couldn’t even attend his cremation because she is also down with COVID.”
Sharma’s family are in Chandigarh, a city hit hard by infections.
“I feel impotent right now. I can’t do anything about it,” she said, adding that she was also angry.
“We had time to prepare for a second wave, but the government did not do anything and now we can see the repercussions,” she said.
Judy Naresh, who runs Ask Abu Dhabi, a Facebook community forum for women from the city’s Indian community, said she has been inundated with requests for help.
“Many of our members have lost their parents and other family,” Naresh said.
She said that her group was coordinating help and arranging injections of remdesivir, widely used in India in the treatment of COVID-19.
The cost of a shot — usually US$12 — was US$120 last week. This week it was US$600. Now her group simply cannot find any.
However, there are successes that make the toil worth it. Battles are won, aid is getting through.
Devgan’s WhatsApp volunteer group has grown to 257 numbers, mostly Indians in Singapore, who have become inadvertent experts at sourcing supplies.
They have raised S$100,000 (US$75,293) and sent at least 60 oxygen concentrators to India. Another 200 machines have been ordered, mostly from China.
With the help of a Delhi-based non-governmental organization, they have built up a network to link people with plasma donors, remdesivir, food, tests, hospital beds, doctors and ambulances.
Tarun Patel, a volunteer and one of the organizers of a relief fund at London’s Neasden Temple, said that the network has swung into action.
“In life, you have two choices — either sit down and do nothing, or roll up your sleeves and do what you can,” Patel said.
One of Britain’s largest and wealthiest Hindu temples, Neasden set up a 500-bed relief center in Atladra, Gujarat state, in partnership with the local government and a hospital.
Patel said it is “kitted out,” including with oxygen supplies, but the outbreak has quickly filled up most of the beds with COVID-19 patients.
“It does not discriminate against age, class or caste,” he said. “We cannot keep up. It is really sad.”
However, members of the diaspora know they must do what they can, no matter how insurmountable the odds might seem.
“If it can save one person’s life, that’s a job well done,” Patel said.
The other day, a young boy donated his £0.50 (US$0.70) pocket money to the cause.
“That is the humanity in people, it is really touching,” he said.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese