Her exam revision done, schoolgirl Swadha Prasad gets on with her real work: finding life-saving oxygen, drugs and hospital beds for people with COVID-19 as India faces a second wave of infections.
As the Indian government struggles to tackle the pandemic, young people have stepped into the breach, setting up apps to crowdsource aid, delivering key supplies and using social media to direct resources to people in need.
Prasad works with dozens of volunteers — all aged 14 to 19 — as part of a youth-led organization called UNCUT, building online databases packed with information about medical resources available across the country.
The operation runs non-stop, with the teenagers constantly on their phones as they verify the availability of supplies, update information in real time and field calls from frantic relatives.
“Some of us do midnight to morning shifts, because the calls don’t stop at 3am,” said Prasad, 17, who works a 14-hour stretch from before midday until 1am.
It is a long and often tiring affair, the Mumbai-based student said.
“If I can help save a life, there is no part of me that is going to say no,” she said.
And lives have been saved, she said, pointing to a case where the team sourced oxygen for a young patient in the middle of the night after an agonizing two-hour wait.
“It’s not only about providing resources ... sometimes people just need to know they are not alone,” she said.
With two-thirds of its 1.3 billion people under the age of 35, India is an overwhelmingly young country, but its young people have never been called on to shoulder such huge responsibilities.
In the slums of Mumbai, Shanawaz Shaikh has provided free oxygen to thousands of people.
Known popularly as the “oxygen man,” the 32-year-old sold his cherished SUV in June last year to fund the initiative after his friend’s pregnant cousin died in a rickshaw while trying to get admitted to a hospital.
“She died because she couldn’t get oxygen in time,” he told reporters.
He never expected to be fielding so many requests nearly a year later.
“We used to get around 40 calls a day last year, now it’s more like 500,” he said.
Shaikh’s team of 20 volunteers are also battling a massive shortage, made worse by profiteers.
“It’s a test of one’s faith, but when I am able to help someone, I feel like crying,” he said, describing how he sometimes travels dozens of kilometers to source oxygen for desperate patients.
While major cities have borne the brunt so far, the limitations of technology are becoming apparent as the virus burrows into smaller towns and villages, software engineer Umang Galaiya told reporters.
Urgent requests for supplies and spare hospital beds have promoted a flood of leads on Twitter — many unconfirmed.
Galaiya responded by building an app to make it easier for users to find what they are looking for and, crucially, limit their search to verified resources only.
Even so, his app is unlikely to help people outside big cities, the 25-year-old said, citing the example of his hometown in hard-hit Gujarat state where Internet usage is low.
“If I look for resources in Jamnagar, there is nothing on Twitter,” he said.
Ultimately the pandemic cannot be defeated without the government, he said, outlining simple measures that could have saved many lives.
For instance, officials could have created a real-time, automatically updated online registry of beds, to spare distressed patients the effort of running from one packed facility to another.
“If we can do it for movie theaters, to avoid overbooking, why can’t we do it for hospitals?” he asked.
FLYBY: The object, appears to be traveling more than 60 kilometers per second, meaning it is not bound by the sun’s orbit, astronomers studying 3I/Atlas said Astronomers on Wednesday confirmed the discovery of an interstellar object racing through the solar system — only the third-ever spotted, although scientists suspect many more might slip past unnoticed. The visitor from the stars, designated 3I/Atlas, is likely the largest yet detected, and has been classified as a comet, or cosmic snowball. “It looks kind of fuzzy,” said Peter Veres, an astronomer with the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center, which was responsible for the official confirmation. “It seems that there is some gas around it, and I think one or two telescopes reported a very short tail.” Originally known as A11pl3Z before
US President Donald Trump’s administration on Monday accused Harvard University of violating the civil rights of its Jewish and Israeli students, and threatened to cut off all federal funding if the university does not take urgent action. Harvard has been at the forefront of Trump’s campaign against top US universities after it defied his calls to submit to oversight of its curriculum, staffing, student recruitment and “viewpoint diversity.” Trump and his allies claim that Harvard and other prestigious universities are unaccountable bastions of liberal, anti-conservative bias and anti-Semitism. In a letter sent to the president of Harvard, a federal task
‘CONTINUE TO SERVE’: The 90-year-old Dalai Lama said he hoped to be able to continue serving ‘sentient beings and the Buddha Dharma’ for decades to come The Dalai Lama yesterday said he dreamed of living for decades more, as the Buddhist spiritual leader prayed with thousands of exiled Tibetans on the eve of his 90th birthday. Thumping drums and deep horns reverberated from the Indian hilltop temple, as a chanting chorus of red-robed monks and nuns offered long-life prayers for Tenzin Gyatso, who followers believe is the 14th reincarnation of the Dalai Lama. Looking in good health, dressed in traditional maroon monk robes and a flowing yellow wrap, he led prayers — days after confirming that the 600-year-old Tibetan Buddhist institution would continue after his death. Many exiled Tibetans
Hundreds of protesters marched through the Mexican capital on Friday denouncing gentrification caused by foreigners, with some vandalizing businesses and shouting “gringos out!” The demonstration in the capital’s central area turned violent when hooded individuals smashed windows, damaged restaurant furniture and looted a clothing store. Mexico City Government Secretary Cesar Cravioto said 15 businesses and public facilities were damaged in what he called “xenophobic expressions” similar to what Mexican migrants have suffered in other countries. “We are a city of open arms... there are always ways to negotiate, to sit at the table,” Cravioto told Milenio television. Neighborhoods like Roma-Condesa