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.
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