London:
The UK stated Sunday it was sending an further 1,000 oxygen ventilators to Covid-struck India, as a group of medical doctors staged their personal intervention by providing lengthy-distance telemedicine from Britain.
Britain has currently sent 495 oxygen concentrators and 200 ventilators to India as the nation grapples with a devastating surge in coronavirus instances, and is shipping 3 bigger production units, dubbed oxygen factories.
“We’re going to be sending out another package of 1,000 ventilators, very shortly,” Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab told BBC tv.
Raab is set to meet External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar on Monday on the margins of G7 talks this week in London.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson is also due to hold a virtual meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, right after cancelling a trip to New Delhi in light of the Covid crisis.
Britain will do every little thing it can in India’s “hour of need”, Raab stated, despite the fact that the government says it has no coronavirus vaccines to spare at this time.
Britain is home to a significant Indian neighborhood, which has mobilised with fundraising appeals to aid provide oxygen and protective gear to hospitals in India.
Members of the British Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (BAPIO) have meanwhile began to hold remote consultations with patients requiring non-urgent care in India, to ease the load on really hard-pressed medics there.
“We are trying to do as much as we can in the form of fundraising to send equipment in the form of oxygen concentrators, creating capacity for ICU (intensive card) beds, BAPIO secretary Parag Singhal told Sky News.
“So that is one stream of work, but we are also attempting to supply aid to our exhausted colleagues in India — medical doctors are overstretched, they are working as well really hard,” the professor stated.
As nicely as phone and on-line consultations, BAPIO medical doctors are analysing the outcomes of routine tests performed in Indian hospitals, he stated.
Some 250 volunteers from Britain have signed up to the telemedicine initiative, and the group is aiming to get 1,000 in all, working in partnership with hospitals and smaller sized clinics in particular in more remote components of India.